Trade & Environment Database – TREND analytics
Environment in Preferential Trade Agreements
We keep you updated on environmental issues in international trade agreements. Learn more about trends in trade, case studies on specific PTA and insights into the TREND web tool.
In 2015, the adoption of the Paris Agreement was hailed as a historic step for international climate policy, enshrining a global commitment to reduce carbon emissions and limit the average global temperature increase to no more than 2°C. The agreement is built on a flexible bottom-up approach, meaning that countries are free to determine their […]
TREND analytics contributes to improving the empirical understanding of the trade and environment interface – a mission of high relevance. That became clear during several presentations and debates in the last two weeks in Geneva, Brussels, Paris and Bonn.
“Trade Behind the Headlines” is the motto for this year’s World Trade Organization (WTO) Public Forum in Geneva from 26 to 28 September 2017. However, when we look behind the headlines of the heated trade policy debate, it becomes apparent that the new trade deals contain a whole range of regulations that go beyond the […]
The 2016 Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union (CETA) and the 2016 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are two recent trade agreements that include several environmental provisions. Moreover, both CETA and the TPP were innovative in that they include new provisions not found in previous agreements. CETA is the very first […]
What drives the inclusion of environmental provisions in trade agreements? One might suspect that environmentally friendly rhetoric hides economic motives, such as ensuring that foreign regulations do not restrict trade, investors are not attracted by a country’s lower standards, and producers are shielded from foreign competitors. Are environmental provisions merely window-dressing, covering up protectionist […]
