"Providing an informed, reasoned and dispassionate
voice to the global public debate..."
Theme #1: International standards should be science-based, cost-efficient, transparent, and developed through a process of openness and consensus, in order to facilitate international trade, investment and innovation and ensure sustainable health and environmental protection and knowledge dissemination.
Balanced, best available science-based, and economically cost-efficient technical standards and regulations help to facilitate trade and investment flows, technological innovations, indigenous economic growth, and health and environmental protection needed to achieve sustainable development. Consensus-based international standards developed by recognized international standards bodies, treaty-based regulatory bodies, and private standards bodies operating within national jurisdiction, and national technical regulations, legislation and other measures promulgated and adopted by WTO Members in implementation thereof, must, at a minimum, be consistent with the provisions of the WTO Agreements, including the Sanitary and Phytosanitary ("SPS"), Technical Barriers to Trade ("TBT"), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT 1994"), and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ("TRIPS") Agreements. Technical standards, regulations and other measures must not be discriminatory and must constitute the least trade-restrictive alternative available considering the risks non-fulfillment would bring.
Programs - ITSSD Theme #1
Science-Based & Economically Cost-Efficient Regulation