UEBT is a membership-based organisation that was created in May 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland. It was conceptualized in response to multiple developments. First of all, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) acknowledged that additional efforts were needed to reach out to the private sector. The CBD recognized the strong link between business and biodiversity, as well as the dependency of industry on biodiversity and it highlighted the key role the private sector plays in sustainable use and the need for efforts and tools to engage it. In pursuit of the decisions that CBD parties had taken regarding private sector engagement and the use of standards in this, the idea of UEBT was conceived. The creation of the Union for Ethical BioTrade also responded to the need expressed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries for ways to differentiate biodiversity-based products in the market. Finally, UEBT built upon efforts initiated by the BioTrade Initiative of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which was created to contribute to making biodiversity a strategy for sustainable development.