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The project, through a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue and its outcome report, explored in depth the concept of the bio-circular-green (BCG) economy. As a promising post-pandemic growth strategy, the BCG economy applies science, innovation and technology to promote the efficient use of resources, maintain and restore our ecosystems, and reduce waste to build a system where businesses can thrive, while contributing to the global efforts of comprehensively addressing all environmental challenges for a sustainable planet.
The BCG economy requires a whole-of-society approach to implement. With its established status as an incubator of ideas, APEC can facilitate and foster dialogue and collaboration among the government, private sector, finance sector, academia, and youth to design a conducive ecosystem to transition to sustainable economic practices. To this end, this project showcased success stories of public-private-people partnerships (4Ps) in advancing the BCG economy. The participants, including policymakers, private sector, financial institutions, academia, and youth, discussed and shared perspectives on how policies should be shaped to support their work in operationalising sustainability and responsible business conduct, which were compiled into a summary report.
This policy brief explores how the bio-circular-green (BCG) economy is a useful guiding framework in developing holistic, cross-cutting and interconnected solutions to advance sustainable and inclusive growth. BCG Economy solutions seek to close loopholes and strengthen policies that rely only on the bio-economy, the circular economy, or the green economy separately. The policy brief underlines the need to enhance the key drivers of the BCG economy: the regulatory environment; technology and innovation; and stakeholder participation.
The AEPR aims to identify structural reforms through green recovery lens by creating an enabling environment for markets, boost business recovery, and ensure that opportunities are open to all. The AEPR 2022 assesses the effects of economic shocks on economies in the region, highlighting the risks and vulnerabilities. It compiles economies' COVID-19 pandemic response and green recovery policies, and recommends APEC to explore a general framework for implementing structural reforms to support a green recovery from economic shocks.
The project examines how to address the challenges hampering MSME food waste reduction policies in many APEC economies. It brought together policy makers, practitioners, and experts throughout the food supply chains to share best practices, policies and actions of APEC member economies to reduce waste in food supply chains. The project outcome provides key recommendations for food waste reduction to MSMEs, with the aim of promoting MSME competitiveness for a sustainable and inclusive Asia-Pacific.
The project drew on the discussion on the bio-circular-green (BCG) economy spearheaded by Thailand and on how to make trade and environment policies work together in the next normal era. Its outcome report compiles APEC experts' insights on sustainability policies and business success stories, best practices, and product champions.
The Implementation Plan of the Food Security Roadmap Towards 2030 identifies specific voluntary actions or initiatives that economies may individually or collectively implement to deliver on the APEC Food Security Roadmap Towards 2030, which aims to establish open, transparent, productive, sustainable, and resilient APEC food systems that ensure access to sufficient, safe, affordable, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for active and healthy lives.
The project and its outcome report promote the concept of climate-smart agriculture among policymakers and stakeholders to support food security, climate adaptation and mitigation, as well as addressing extreme weather. The project further explores space-based innovations, models and platforms have been developed to transform the agricultural sector, increase its productivity and adapting and building resilience to climate change.
The Policy Recommendations for Tourism of the Future: Regenerative Tourism provides an assessment of the tourism industry post COVID-19 pandemic, explores initiatives and provides a set of policy recommendations to revive and restore the industry for the immediate and long term. The future of tourism needs to contribute to all elements of wellbeing not only for travelers, but also for local businesses, as well as their employees. It should also be regenerative in nature, promotes sustainable practices, as well as responds to change so that it can thrive amid future crises.
The recovery of the tourism industry from the impact of COVID-19 rests on the integration and synergised efforts of stakeholders. The Updated APEC Guidelines for Tourism Stakeholders provide a holistic approach to rebuilding the tourism industry across the region, including through investment, creation of employment opportunities, human resource development, occupational standards, and training and effective MSME support. These Guidelines seek to add value to the APEC Guidelines on Ensuring Tourist Safety, and together they provide conduct benchmarks for different aspects of the tourism industry.
Decarbonizing power systems is critical to reducing emissions and reaching global carbon neutrality, and to the broader goal of addressing the urgent challenge of climate change, which has been affirmed in the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040 and other APEC's work. This project draws on the discussions among a broad array of expert stakeholders on power system decarbonization in APEC economies. The outcome report provides key recommendations for policy interventions, as well as corporate actions and commitments, that APEC member economies and the private sector stakeholders may take to help meet the collective decarbonization goals.
In the midst of the growing demand of energy consumption in the region, renewable and clean energy, especially solar energy, has become a very important means to achieve the APEC aspirational goal of doubling the share of renewables in the energy mix from 2010 levels by 2030. To promote the development of solar energy in APEC economies, the project brought together policy makers, private and academic sectors and other stakeholders to share case studies and strategies in solar energy, and provided the opportunities to learn from one another. The project outcome report includes recommendations for APEC economies to develop and implement policies on solar energy.
This project sets out the lessons learnt on how a low-carbon hydrogen international standard could be reached. Its outcome report explores topics such as APEC economies' potential capability to produce, import and export low-carbon hydrogen, their experiences with existing hydrogen production standards, international standards on the production of low-carbon hydrogen which would benefit the APEC region, and next steps for developing and implementing an international standard on low-carbon hydrogen.
The project aimed to contribute to APEC efforts in protecting the oceans from land-based debris through promoting circular economy practices and sustainable material management in the region. It promoted capacity building of APEC member economies in addressing marine plastic effectively, sharing of best practices and innovations, identifying policy measures to incentivize circular economy practices, and developing recommendations for tackling marine plastic litter.
Weak or insufficient waste management and recycling (WMR) infrastructure drives solid waste pollution including marine debris and ocean plastic. This project promotes establishing environmentally sound WMR infrastructure, to enable collection and processing of recyclable materials for their sustainable recovery through recycling. It also recommends key policy areas and associated methodologies to address WMR challenges: supporting environmental regulation; improving understanding of waste and recyclable materials; materials quality and processing health and safety standards; and enabling policies for recycling infrastructure investment including public-private partnerships.
One approach to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while still creating the necessary environment for development is incorporating the long-term toll on the environment into the cost of the economic activity. To this end, APEC economies are already using instruments such as carbon pricing, but their application all over the world creates a patchwork of regulatory environments, where businesses not only face varying compliance conditions, but also bear different costs for producing the same goods and services. This project accumulates the state of carbon pricing initiatives in the Asia Pacific region, to provide a background for further discussion in APEC and international fora of what regulators are doing and explore opportunities for cooperation.