Trade In The Service Of Sustainable Development

In the Bretton Woods era, trade liberalization, the improvement of labour rights and working conditions, and the strengthening of environmental policies, were seen as mutually supportive. But is this always true? Can we continue to pretend to protect the rights of workers and to improve environmental protection, particularly through climate change mitigation strategies, within an agenda focused on trade liberalization? Is it credible to pursue trade policies that aim to expand the volumes of trade, without linking such policies to labour and environmental standards, seen as 'non-trade' concerns? This book asks these questions, offering a detailed analysis of whether linkage is desirable and legally acceptable under the disciplines of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It concludes that trade can work for sustainable development, but only if we see it as a means for social and environmental progress, including climate change mitigation, and if we avoid fetichizing it as an end to be pursued for its own sake.

A multi-disciplinary investigation of how economic globalization can help achieve the UN's 2030 Agenda, exploring trade-offs among the Goals.

The contemporary orthodox view of world trade has centred, generally unchallenged, on the ideas of free trade, based on the theoretical construct of comparative advantage. This book will engage in a critique of the orthodox position based on the underlying theoretical economic construct, the historical development of the now developed economies and the morally unsustainable position of the free-trade regime. The author examines alternatives such as Most Favoured Nation and Preferential Trading Agreements before making the argument in favour of Asymmetric Trading, where the underdeveloped economies can develop behind tariff barriers and quotas, whilst the triadic nations maintain a lack of barriers to the exports of these economies. He outlines how such a trading regime would be mutually beneficial in the long term, in the sense that development through industrialisation takes place and the increase in GDP per capita would allow markets for exports to be sustainable, thus widening the market for the goods and services of the developed economies. However, the author demonstrates that free trade actually increases the development gap by maintaining the status quo in terms of the underdeveloped economies specialising in and exporting low value-added primary products and importing high value-added manufactures. The book analyses contemporary and historical data to illustrate how an alternative trading regime can be truly advantageous to both the developed and underdeveloped regions of the world: a global trading regime that is capable of increasing GDP in a sustainable manner without transferring a surplus from the poor to the rich nations and without a long-term commitment on the part of the developed nations to altruism.

This edition focuses on trade connectivity, which is critical for inclusiveness and sustainable development. Physical connectivity enables the movement of goods and services to local, regional and global markets.

Trade liberalization, as promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), has become one of the dominant drivers and most controversial aspects of globalization. Trade sustainability impact assessments (SIAs) were introduced as a means of generating better understanding especially of the social and environmental impacts of trade liberalisation, and of making those impacts more consistent with sustainable development. This book takes a hard look at the experience of Trade SIAs to date, and the extent to which they have achieved their objectives and improved the outcomes of trade negotiations. It proposes several ways in which Trade SIAs could be made more effective, and illustrates these in respect of controversial sectors in which trade liberalisation has been implemented or proposed, including commodities, services and investment. Finally the book makes proposals beyond SIA through which some of the conflicts between trade liberalization and sustainable development could be more effectively addressed. Written by top researchers and experts on trade SIAs, this book is vital for researchers, academics, post-graduate students and policy makers working on any aspect of impact assessment, international trade or globalisation more generally. In addition, the book will provide a particularly useful background for those considering how the environment and trade interrelate at both global and regional levels, with some particular insights on climate change and trade policies.