On January 19th, 2024, the staff of the CBP Green Trade Office joined the CBTS team at the Bush School, D.C. for what was the inaugural Green Trade Workshop, along with a host of in-person and remote attendees from across government and private industry.
The newly formed DHS CBP Office of Green Trade aims to establish CBP as a champion for the green economy and a leader in the fight against climate change and environmental degradation by facilitating the global transition to green trade and serving as a responsible steward of our own environmental footprint.
The goals of this joint workshop were to identify current agency lines of effort, enhance interagency awareness about capabilities/definitions/gaps/needs in global supply chain emissions measurement, and to explore formation of a green trade measurement community of practice. CBTS, with strategic interest and projects in detection science, intelligent data systems, and supply chain exploration sees apparent synergies in the Green Trade mission, with interconnections to global trade and production shifts seen with nearshoring, as well as environmental crimes facilitated by illicit trade.
CBTS and the DHS Office of Green trade were joined by representatives from the:
- US Department of Transportation
- Environmental Protection Agency
- U.S. Trade Representative
- U.S. International Trade Commission
- Department of Energy
- U.S. Census Bureau
- International Trade Administration
- Department of Treasury
- Securities and Exchange Commission
The workshop offered USG personnel an opportunity to briefly explain relevant areas of work in which they/their offices are involved, painting a fairly broad picture of efforts across government to approach challenges associated with the quantification of emissions,impacts, and the implementation of programs to incentivize emissions reduction. A mix of scientific, policy, and programmatic approaches were described, and the attendees remained very engaged in discussion with their colleagues as they learned more about a wide-ranging network of activities in these areas.
For the afternoon session, a representative group of companies offering products and developments that aide in trade-related traceability and compliance joined the discussion. Each of these companies have involvement or equities in emissions tracking or touchpoints with the entities and trade associated with emissions production.
The keynote speaker from the S&P Journal of Commerce, Eric Johnson, shared a well-informed perspective on the implementation and challenges associated with greener practices in the trades, offering a nice segue to afternoon presentations by companies that have already developed product offerings that assist private and public sector entities with traceability and compliance. Sourcemap, Chain.IO, Neoflow, and Measur.IO all presented their relevant product offerings and explained implementations through presentation of use cases.
The CBTS mission is enriched by the dialogues and relevant applied research opportunities that are being generated from the inaugural Green Trade Workshop, and researchable topics in this area will be detailed in the upcoming CBTS COE RFP. Please be sure to keep apprised of this and other opportunities on our website at https://cbts.tamu.edu/proposal-information/.