./.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/CTE/W/131
2 February 2000
(00-0413)
Committee on Trade and Environment
IMPROVING THE TRADE AND ENVIRONMENT PAGES OF THE WTO WEBSITE
Item 10 of the Work Programme
Note by the Secretariat
1. The intention of this Note is to inform Members of the improvements which are in the process
of being made to the Internet website of the WTO, with specific reference to work relevant to the
trade and environment interface, and the discussions and documents in the CTE.  This is part of the
Secretariat's ongoing efforts to improve transpar ency and make it easier for the public to obtain
correct information about the WTO.  Much of this information is already available but not necessarily
easy to find or digest.
I. IMPROVING THE WTO'S WEBSITE
2. The WTO Internet website has emerged as an efficient and effective tool for providing factual
information about activities in the WTO.  Efforts are now under way to make further improvements tothe entire WTO website, in order to facilitate navigation, and make the material easier to reach and
understand.  The intention is to make the website more easily accessible to a public with little
knowledge of WTO subjects, Agreements or activities, while at the same time containing sufficiently
detailed information to meet the needs of users from WTO Member Governments, other
intergovernmental organizations and more specialized members of the public.  Another aim is to set
up the pages of information in such a way that user s save time looking for the information they need.
The Trade and Environment Division and the Information and Media Relations Division are in theprocess of compiling documentation for the new trade and environment pages on the website.  The
target date to have it available in all three official WTO languages is by the end of April 2000.
3. The easiest way to reach the trade and environment section will be by going to www.wto.org,
staying with English, or switching to French or Sp anish, and clicking on “trade topics”, “sujets” or
“Temas Comerciales” respectively.  Unless notified otherwise, the direct addresses will be:
www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/envir_e.htm
www.wto.org/french/tratop_f/envir_f/envir_f.htm
www.wto.org/spanish/tratop_s/envir_s/envir_s.htm
4. Information covered in these pages will range from a history of the CTE and its agenda to a
section on environment-related trade disputes in the WTO.  There will also be a section containing the
Trade and Environment Bulletins  and one with frequently asked questions in the trade and
environment area.  All the information will be pr esented to make it easier for those with little
knowledge of the WTO to learn more about the Organization, the manner in which trade and
environmental issues have been brought into the discussions, and the work of the CTE.  The websitepages relating to trade and environment should, however, not lose their appeal for those seeking aWT/CTE/W/131
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more detailed discussion of this subject matter in the WTO.  Information will also be available
concerning past WTO symposia on trade and environment.
II. RECENT STATISTICS
5. Overall, visits to the WTO's website have been steadily increasing.  The number of individual
users of the WTO website increased again in November 1999 in the run-up to theWTO's 3
rd Ministerial Conference in Seattle, reaching a record level of 361,708 individual users
from 171 countries.  This represents an increase in users of 80 per cent over the previous month, and
an increase of about 160 per cent in comparison to November 1998.  The figure of 361,708 is an
absolute minimum due to the fact that any number of users coming to the WTO site from behind a
network firewall are all counted as a single user.  The average length of individual user sessions has
remained stable at about 14 minutes.
6. The volume of information, data and documents downloaded from the site during November
saw an increase to a total of 131,623 megabytes.  (By comparison, there were 201,101 individual
users in October 1999, who downloaded 88,000 megabytes of information and documents.)  One
megabyte is the equivalent of about 1 million pages of text.
7. In November 1999, the trade and environment pages of the website received 9,377 visitors.
The WTO Secretariat's Special Study on Trade and Environment  remained at the top of the list of files
consulted by users in November, with 7,776 copies downloaded.  In October 1999, when this Study
was released, 21,658 copies of various parts of the Study were downloaded.
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