Policy paper

Joint statement on climate change, the environment, and sustainable trade, Sunday 16 July 2023

Published 17 July 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

We, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Chile:

• emphasise our shared environmental objectives including promoting mutually supportive trade and environmental policies, promoting high levels of environmental protection and effective enforcement of environmental laws, and enhancing our capacities to address trade-related environmental issues, including through cooperation
• recognise that progress has been made in recent years to strengthen global cooperation in tackling environmental challenges, such as the interlinked global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution; and that meeting these challenges requires transformative action, including through reducing emissions, accelerating the transition to clean energy, and protecting, conserving, restoring and promoting nature and biodiversity
• recognise the urgent need to take measures to tackle these global crises and, as set out in the CPTPP, recognise each other’s sovereign right to establish our own levels of domestic environmental protection and our own environmental priorities
• emphasise our respective commitments under the multilateral environmental agreements to which we are individually a party, including under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Paris Agreement, and the Convention on Biological Diversity
• recognise the important aims of the Paris Agreement to which we are all party and the 2022 UNFCCC COP 27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh which reiterated that the risks and impacts of climate change will be significantly reduced at a global temperature increase below 1.5°C compared with 2°C and resolved to pursue further efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C including by taking immediate and further action to cut emissions as part of the global response to climate change
• will work to support the transition to a low emissions and resilient economy and take collective and individual actions to combat climate change
• recognise the importance of promoting and strengthening an open trade and investment environment, which includes seeking a broad-based distribution of the benefits of economic growth through the expansion of business and industry, the creation of jobs, and the alleviation of poverty
• recognise the potential of cooperation to reinforce global efforts to achieve sustainable development and contribute to solutions for issues of global concern including the environment and climate change, labour rights, gender equality, Indigenous rights, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and domestic regional economic development, and highlighting the value we attach to inclusive trade and sustainable development
• highlight the work done to date by the CPTPP members including through the Environment Committee, to which the United Kingdom will be the newest participant in the near future
• will participate in the future work of CPTPP members to review the implementation and operation of the Environment Chapter of the CPTPP, and work together when undertaking cooperative activities to support inclusive trade and sustainable development, tackle climate change and promote trade in environmental goods and services. In doing so, we will consider relevant developments in international fora and our existing individual commitments, such as those under multilateral environmental agreements to which we are individually a party.