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Restoration of degraded forest, and improved land management are now declared priorities of the Government. The Government has begun to encourage local industries to use Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) concepts. Since 2009, Ghana is implementing the EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing scheme to ensure that only timber from legal sources is exported to the EU; according to the authorities, FLEGT licences should start to be issued in the last quarter of 2014. The authorities have indicated that existing national laws, policies and programmes that are complementary to the National REDD+ Strategy include the Natural Resources and Environmental Governance Programme (NREG), the goal of which is to reduce illegal logging and integrate environmental considerations into policy formulation and implementation across sectors; the National Forest Plantation Development Programme which aims to arrest and reverse deforestation rates in the country, as well as taking steps to increase the national forest cover; and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the EU’s FLEGT initiative to enhance forest governance and reduce illegal logging.

Ghana disposes of a large idle sawmills capacity, due to depletion of its traditional timber resources. (…)

Indeed, the Government in the past subsidized consumption of fuel products with a view to redistributing income and smoothing-out price fluctuations. In recent years, the Government has been increasing ex-refinery prices of petroleum products so as to align them with import costs, thus reducing the extent of the subsidy considerably. Total petroleum subsidies amounted to less than 0.4% of GDP in 2013. Cross-subsidies are maintained, whereby higher prices of gasoline are charged to finance larger subsidies for kerosene (lighting for rural areas), and for premix (for fishing boats). (…)

Since 2005, Ghana has been phasing-out its fossil fuel subsidy, which is one of UNEP's key recommendations. The removal of this fuel subsidy has made it possible to (1) eliminate fees for attending primary and junior secondary schools; (2) allocate extra funds for primary health care in the poorest areas; (3) expand the provision of mass urban transport; and (4) increase funds to a rural electrification scheme.

(…) HKC is a party to the WTO Information Technology Agreement and the revised Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), and participates in other plurilateral initiatives such as the negotiations on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the recently-launched talks on environmental goods among WTO Members. (…)

On the plurilateral front, HKC is a participant of the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and Information Technology Agreement (ITA). We are also taking part in the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) negotiations.

HKC together with 13 other WTO Members announced on 24 January 2014 an initiative to begin preparations for negotiations to liberalize trade in environmental goods. The negotiations on the EGA were formally launched on 8 July 2014, with the goal of eliminating tariffs on a wide range of environmental goods. HKC is committed to working towards the timely and successful conclusion of the EGA.

HKC believes that the EGA is a viable building block for multilateral liberalisation in the trade of environmental goods, given the participants have agreed that the outcome of the negotiations will be applied on a most-favoured-nation basis when the EGA takes effect. We also believe that the EGA will contribute to the international environmental protection agenda. The elimination of tariffs on environmental goods covered by the EGA will lower the cost of those products. This will be conducive to their wider use and to environmental protection generally.

(…) HKC is a signatory of the revised WTO plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), and the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), and is currently engaged in the plurilateral negotiation on environmental goods.

The Hong Kong Science Park is home to about 440 technology companies. The Science Park's incubation programme has so far nurtured over 450 technology start-ups. Phase 3 of the Science Park's expansion is underway with a strong focus on green technology. When fully completed in 2016, the new phase will provide space for an additional 150 technology companies and offer 4,000 R&D-related jobs.