WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/CTE/W/237 
31 August 2004 
 
 (04-3597) 
Committee on Trade and Environment  
  
 
 
ENVIRONMENTAL DATABASE AND THE NEW WTO CENTRAL  
REGISTRY OF NOTIFICATIONS (CRN) FACILITY   
 
Item 4 of the Work Programme
 
 
Note by the Secretariat  
  
This document has been pre pared under the Secretariat's 
own responsibility and without prejudice to the positions of 
Members and to their rights and obligations under the WTO. 
 
  
 
I. BACKGROUND 
1. Within its terms of reference, the Committ ee on Trade and Environment (CTE) is mandated, 
inter alia ,  to address "the provisions of the multilate ral trading system with respect to the 
transparency of trade measures used for envi ronmental purposes and environmental measures and 
requirements which have significant trade effects"  (Item 4 of the CTE's work programme).   
 
II. ENVIRONMENTAL DATABASE (EDB) 
2. To initiate work under Item 4, at its m eeting of 20-21 July 1996, the CTE requested the 
Secretariat to prepare an information note on the c overage and operation of th e WTO Central Registry 
of Notifications (CRN) (document WT/CTE/W/34, date d 5 July 1996).  At that time, the CRN was an 
electronic database established to keep track of no tifications by providing:  an inventory of all 
notification requirements under the WTO;  an index of all notifications received by the Secretariat 
from Members;  and, upon request, information on compliance by Members with notification 
requirements.  It was noted by a number of delega tions that the absence in the CRN of a centralized 
point for notifications on trade-related environmenta l measures had made it difficult for Members to 
retrieve information on such meas ures easily and efficiently.   
 3. Consequently, a recommendation was made in the 1996 CTE Report to the Singapore 
Ministerial Conference (document WT/CTE/1, da ted 12 November 1996) for the Secretariat to 
compile and update annually all envi ronment-related notifications to the WTO.  It was proposed that 
this database which could be accessed by WTO Memb ers, would contain information where available 
for each notified measure:  it s nature/title;  objec tive(s);  product coverage;  relevant WTO 
provisions/MEA provisions;  and a desc ription of how it operates.     
 
4. In fulfilment of that recommendation, in March 1998, the CTE agreed to develop a WTO Environmental Database (EDB).  The Secretariat was instructed, on an annual basis, to undertake a comprehensive review of all envi ronment-related notifications, su ch as the one which had been WT/CTE/W/237 
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 completed for 1997 in document WT/CTE/W /77, utilizing search words and met hodology as described 
in documents WT/CTE/W/78 and 102.  Subseque ntly, the following EDB documents have been 
prepared by the Secretariat, providing the CTE with an overview
1 of environment-related measures or 
provisions that have been notified or reviewed:   
Notifications made in year  Document  
1998 WT/CTE/W/118, dated 28 June, 1999 
1999 WT/CTE/W/143, dated 22 June 2000 
2000 WT/CTE/W/195, dated 20 June 2001 
2001 WT/CTE/EDB/1, dated 31 May 2002 
  
 
III. RECENT DEVELOPMENT IN THE CRN  
5. With a view to enhance Documents Online and to facilitate the search and retrieval of 
notifications in the CRN, a new facility was initiate d in autumn 2002, and has been up and running  
since May 2004.  One of its main functions is to include in the on-line facility an "environment index" 
to enable searches for environment-related notificati ons.  It allows the search for notifications by:  
notification requirement;  broad subject;  agreement and article;  type of measure;  date of receipt in 
the Secretariat;  notification document date;  and by using the HS and WTO services classifications. 
 
6. With this new CRN facility, searches can be performed, for example, in the following ways: 
  
 (i) To search  for a notification relevant to the environment made under any WTO  
agreement  since 1995 by means of a subject classification field based on the UNEP 
Infoterra2 thesaurus; 
 
 (ii) to retrieve all notifications re levant to the environment submitted by a particular  
Member  by using "Search all" in the "Environment classification field" together with 
the name of that Member in the "Members notifying field";   
  (iii) to retrieve all notifications relating to a specific  subject  submitted by a particular 
Member by selecting from the Infoterra classification pop-up help file the 
corresponding term (for instance "17372" in th e case of pesticides) together with the 
name of that Member in the "Members notifying field";  and 
  (iv) to search for notifications containing a specific  word  (such as "chemical") by using 
the full-text search facility in the new CRN  interface or alternatively by using the 
standard full-text search features of Documents online.   
             
                                                     
 
1Bearing in mind the complexity and the need to exercise considerable judgement in what constitutes 
an environment-related measure, the Secretariat has made this listing as comprehensive as possible.  
 2 INFOTERRA is the global environmental information exchange network of the United Nations 
Environment Programme.  The network operates through a system of  government-designated national focal 
points, which at present number 174.  The INFOTERRA database is available on-line.  It allows a standard 
search in the database or a thesauru s supported search.  It also enables browsing of the source names ordered 
alphabetically.   http://p5uni.ii.pw.edu.pl/envoc/   
  WT/CTE/W/237 
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 IV. USE OF THE NEW CRN FACILITY FOR THE EDB    
7. The EDB was originally established due to the fact that there had been an absence of a 
centralized point in the WTO to se arch and retrieve notifications re lating to environmental measures.  
Since information on WTO environmental-related notifications can be easily accessed and searched 
by means of the new CRN facility, one could reason that the EDB documents have become defunct.  
For this reason, the preparation of the EDB documents has been discontinued since 2003.      
 8. Moreover, one could observe the following adva ntages using the new CRN Internet facility:  
  (i) with the new CRN facility, all relevant re trievals and searches can be performed in an 
effective and efficient way;   
  (ii) due to the fact that this facility is an  integral part of WTO Documents Online system, 
it is continuously kept up to date online;  and    
 
 (iii) since notifications are issued as unrest ricted documents, the new facility is accessible 
not only to WTO Members, but also to the general public.   
 9. The Secretariat, with the assistance of th e Document Systems Section in Language Services 
and Documentation Division (LSDD), will provide th e CTE with a more in-depth explanation and 
demonstration of the new CRN facility at the forthcoming Committee meeting.  
 
  
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