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Introduction

Sustainable products can be defined as products that generate greater positive and fewer negative social, environmental and/or economic impacts than conventional products along the value chain from producer to end user.  Benefits of sustainable products can be realised through production, consumption and/or disposal processes and can accrue value throughout the chain.

Sustainable products could make an important contribution to sustainable development in developing countries. Our work is intended to help developing countries obtain benefits from trade liberalisation in sustainable products.

A major focus of this work is on new products such as biofuels.

Progress to date

We carried out research into sustainable products and production and process methods (PPMs) in collaboration with the Regional and International Networking Group (Ring), from which the following publication was produced:

'Sustainable products and the PPMs dilemma: how the international community can help in resolving developing countries' concerns'

Annie Dufey, IIED and Nicola Borregaard, RIDES

2004, 2pp (View PDF )

We produced the discussion paper Challenging preconceptions about trade in sustainable products. Towards win-win-win for developing countries by Nicola Borregaard and Annie Dufey (View PDF - English, Spanish)

We also contributed a chapter to the book Agricultural Commodities, Trade and Sustainable Development (View PDF)

Partners and Donors

Funding for this research was provided by the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Danida) and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS).

Further information

For more information on the project please contact Annie Dufey.

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