On 16 November 2020, ITC and UNCTAD launched the BioTrade Self-Assessment Tool that enables companies to benchmark their sustainability practices against the BioTrade Principles and Criteria (P&C). The launch took place during a dedicated webinar organized by UNCTAD in collaboration with partners to present the updated version of the BioTrade P&C, which is a set of guidelines developed by UNCTAD and partners for companies, governments and other stakeholders to conduct the sourcing, production and commercialization of biodiversity-based products under specific environmental, social and economic criteria.

The freely-accessible BioTrade Self-Assessment Tool can be used by companies, producers and cooperatives from various biodiversity-based value chains to benchmark their sustainability practices against the BioTrade P&C in a transparent, neutral and independent manner. The tool is available for different biodiversity-related sectors such as Marine Food, Marine Tourism, Terrestrial Food and Terrestrial Non-Food. The tool for Terrestrial Tourism will be available in Q1 2021.

The tool was developed by ITC’s T4SD Programme and the UNCTAD BioTrade Initiative under the framework of the Global BioTrade Programme “Linking trade, biodiversity and sustainable development” financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs – SECO. It is available at the BioTrade Knowledge Sharing page under ITC’s Sustainability Map.