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

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, are expected to chart a course for development over the next 15 years. The 17 SDGs cover poverty, health, sustainable development, and the environment, among others, but not trade. This book shows that international trade can contribute to achieving all SDGs. It maps out a triple-win scenario where good trade policy (i) spurs international trade, (ii) contributes to development, and (iii) helps achieve the SDGs.

In Johannesburg at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, over one hundred and eighty states assumed a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development economic development, social development, an environmental protection at the local, national, regional and global levels. This remarkable collection of papers, sponsored by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), demonstrates that sustainable development serves as a unifying concept with the potential to facilitate much-needed respect for international law and timely implementation of diverse and overlapping international commitments. It builds on the substance of a rich and complex debate at the intersections among economic, social, and environmental law, bringing together a broad cross-section of viewpoints and voices. The authors review recent developments in WTO discussions and negotiations, and in the recent decisions of the WTO Appellate Body, from a sustainable development law perspective. They also survey relevant new developments in trade and economic agreements at regional, inter-regional and bi-lateral levels. The various essays focus on sustainable development aspects of key issues in recent trade negotiations such as the Singapore Issues (investment, competition, trade facilitation, and government procurement), intellectual property rights, investment arbitration and the linkage between the WTO and multilateral environmental accords, (MEAand¿s).. Among the specific topics covered are the following: Emerging areas of law and policy in trade and sustainable development, The underlying development agendas in global trade law negotiations, Cooperation and potential negotiation on international competition law, Sustainable development aspects of intellectual property rights negotiations, Overlaps between multilateral environmental accords (MEAand¿s) and the WTO, Recent developments in WTO dispute settlement procedures and proceedings, Human rights and environmental opportunities from trade liberalisation and increased market acces, Human rights and environment impact assessment techniques used to analyse trade agreements, Recent developments in bi-lateral and regional trade agreements. Trade, investment, and competition law practitioners and negotiators in developed and developing countries will find this book of great value, as will development and environment law professionals with responsibility for trade and WTO law related matters. With rich contributions from leading trade law practitioners, academics, and WTO panel and appellate body roster members, Sustainable Developments in World Trade Law offers a constructive, timely and accessible expert analysis of recent discussions and advances in the field, providing an integrated and essential guide to some of the most important issues in international economic law today.

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.

This book seeks to answer the questions: how do the rules of international treaties on trade and investment apply to the new laws and policies relating to energy-related trade, and do the rules of the multilateral system contribute to or detract from sustainable development? An emerging set of new problems in the law of international trade is how to reconcile the rules of the multilateral trading system with shortages of certain natural resources and the necessity to develop renewable energy resources. The chapters in this book provide a comprehensive analysis of the international trade issues presented by national trade laws and policies with regard to natural resources and energy. This book is about the extent to which we are interpreting existing rules to cover emerging problems and how the rules of the multilateral trading system can be adapted to achieve sustainable development in natural resources and energy. The book begins with a survey of selected national laws relating to recent restrictions on the export of natural resources, both resources used to produce energy as well as natural resources essential for industrial production. After examining the range of such laws in selected important countries, we turn to the application of the rules of the multilateral trading system to such export restrictions. We discuss the major rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as the natural resources rules in selected regional preferential free trade agreements. While there is not a comprehensive global legal regime on competition law, we believe it is also important to examine how selected national competition laws impact export restrictions on natural resources. This book will be a major contribution to the international dialogue on international economic law issues with respect to trade in natural resources and energy.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines international trade as "an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, [that] contributes to the promotion of sustainable development".