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USCIB Environment Committee
Who We Are:
USCIB’s Environment Committee:
-promotes appropriate environmental protection and energy security integrated with open trade and investment
-advances continuous improvement in technological innovation and deployment within the context of economic growth as fundamental to sustainable development.
We involve a wide range of sectors, and emphasize the supply and value-chain connections across those sectors. Our advocacy reflects an integrated approach to mutually reinforcing policy areas and emphasizes the importance of enabling frameworks from business solutions to energy, environmental, social and economic challenges. USCIB’s climate change and energy work has been brought into the Environment Committee’s work program to ensure consistency and fuller engagement.
As part of the Environment Committee, USCIB’s International Product Policy Working Group works to ensure that U.S. products have timely access to markets around the world by encouraging product and chemical policies based on hazard and risk evaluations that reflect good science, protect confidential business information, and avoid technical barriers to trade.
Our U.S. and Global Presence:
The Environment Committee and its International Product Policy Working Group meet regularly with the State Department and other important Administration officials. In addition, the group focuses on extending its influence in a range of strategic international forums such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Environment Programme, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Energy Agency, and the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).
How We Operate
Responsive to our Members:
The Environment Committee and its International Product Policy Working Group meets throughout the year to bring together a cross-section of US industry to share resources to track and influence developments in strategic international policy forums. In addition to face-to-face meetings, the Committee uses conference calls and webinars to ensure broad involvement and effective use of time.
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Chair
Ann Condon
Director for Resource and Environment Strategies
General Electric Company
Vice Chair
Paul Hagen
Director
Beveridge & Diamond, PC
Staff Contacts
Norine Kennedy
Vice President, Energy and Environmental Affairs
(212) 703-5052 or nkennedy@uscib.org
Helen Medina
Director – Life Sciences and Product Policy
(212) 703-5047 or hmedina@uscib.org
Kira Yevtukhova
Program Assistant
(212) 703-5082 or kyevtukhova@uscib.org
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Our Strategy for Success:
USCIB’s Environment Committee takes a two-pronged approach to defend and promote its members views:
-meeting with government officials in Washington DC and New York to communicate US business interests
-directly representing US industry at high-level international policy deliberations and negotiations.
Some Recent Policy Priorities and Initiatives:
Green growth through technological innovation and investment: We support integrated policies that enable innovation and investment in global markets and are pro-actively engaged in the UN Environmental Programme and OECD, including through the US Council Foundation’s Green Economies Dialogue (GED) project. This project brings together policy and business communities for intensive discussion of the best paths for greening economic activity and bottom lines –mobilizing experts from the public and private sectors, along with leading academics and NGOs for workable international approaches that deliver green growth, technologies, and greener jobs. Over the past year, the GED project has informed international policy deliberation in the lead up to Rio+20, with industry, government, and others sharing perspectives on priorities for a global framework with bottom-line motivations for evolving technology and business practices. Though intensive dialogue sessions in Washington, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, and Brasilia, as well as two panels at Rio+20, the GED has provided a platform to discuss key international policy questions, with the goal of demonstrating that economic growth and the pursuit of environmental objectives go hand-in-hand. The GED project has commissioned academic research for publication in the influential journal, Energy Economics, with research papers by highly regarded experts exploring a variety of aspects of green growth and green jobs.
Enabling Frameworks to Strengthen Business Role in Sustainability: USCIB supports good governance, voluntary commitments, corporate social responsibility, and capacity building as important outcomes of Rio+20. USCIB has consistently advocated for the importance of predictable and transparent policymaking in international forums. This is why we have been involved in the preparatory work leading up to Rio+20 for several years, were actively engaged at the Conference and are now analyzing the follow-up areas where US business interests will be impacted and where US companies should engage. This is to ensure that international policies and practices relating to access to environmental information are not interpreted widely without explicit protection of confidential business information, including intellectual property rights.
Sound chemical management across the entire life cycle: USCIB supports sound chemicals management throughout their lifecycle so that by 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that will not have significant adverse affects on human health and the environment as an outcome of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM3), [September 17-21, 2012, Nairobi, Kenya.] USCIB supports the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, where it has been active in representing downstream users of chemicals at meetings leading up to and at ICCM3. While USCIB believes that sharing relevant information along the supply chain to minimize significant adverse impacts on human health and the environment is important, protecting confidential businessinformation and intellectual property rights has an essential role in fostering innovation.
Responding to and reducing climate change risks and advancing energy access and security: USCIB has been active in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since 1993. We have also been active in the International Energy Agency (IEA) providing US business views on energy and climate aspects of mitigation and adaptation opportunities and concerns. USCIB has called for a long-term, comprehensive UN framework and supports enhanced business engagement at the UNFCCC working through the Major Economies Business Forum (BizMEF) to create a recognized “business channel”. As the UNFCCC has matured, it has initiated new technology and finance institutions and is now developing a new post-2020 agreement. These will require business participation and input. In response, USCIB has developed proposals for an efficient, business organized interface to the UNFCCC that can reach out transparently for input and participation from business in all sectors and nations, allowing international processes to take better advantage of the range of technical expertise and relevant, responsible perspectives that business can provide. These proposals reflect effective procedures in other intergovernmental institutions, such as the OECD-BIAC, APEC-ABAC, and Asia Pacific Partnership (now GSEP) models.
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