Study Guide

3. Green Customs

3.1. Definition

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Green Customs Initiative (GCI) define Green Customs as the work customs administrations do to enforce environmental laws, prevent illegal trade in environmentally sensitive goods, and support sustainable trade. It aligns customs practice with the major MEAs and with global agendas on climate change, biodiversity, hazardous waste, and ozone protection. In operational terms, it places three responsibilities on officers and border agencies:

Enforce compliance with multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs)
Prevent the illegal movement of regulated environmental commodities
Facilitate trade in sustainable goods and environmentally sound technologies

What this looks like at the border

Environmental controls translate into familiar customs tasks: checking permits and licenses against MEA requirements, targeting high-risk consignments through risk profiling, physically inspecting and testing suspect cargo, seizing non-compliant goods, and coordinating with environmental regulators, wildlife authorities, and police. This work increasingly relies on advanced electronic data, scanning technology, and analytics to find a small number of illegal shipments inside very large trade flows.