The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements

Once seen as aspirational and relatively innocuous, ’sustainability’ or ’sustainable development’ provisions are now changing the face of international trade agreements. The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements gathers fundamental, first-hand analyses of these novel commitments across dozens of agreements, considering their legal, political, and economic aspects.

Drawing on perspectives from different parts of the world and engaging experts in the law and practice of sustainability provisions, this volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the latest developments and innovations in international trade agreements. It also evaluates the development challenges that sustainability requirements pose for countries with limited resources and capacity, for whom lower labour and environmental regulatory costs have been a competitive asset.

The present volume explores the intersectional aspects of sustainability - such as gender equality, biodiversity, animal welfare, and Indigenous rights - in addition to the more traditional dimensions of sustainability, namely economic development, environmental conservation, and improvement of labour standards.

There is little doubt that a sustainability revolution in global production patterns is needed. Considering the details of its operation - how it can come into being, who will bear the increased production costs, and how decisions on difficult trade-offs will be made - reveals the immense challenges involved in developing a new international law for sustainable trade. Read together, the chapters in this volume outline the contours this emerging legal framework, examine its practical operation, and offer important reflections upon the real extent and the foreseeable consequences of this sustainability revolution in international trade agreements.

Geraldo Vidigal, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, Kathleen Claussen, Professor of Law, Georgetown University

Geraldo Vidigal is Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he coordinates the LLM in International Trade and Investment Law. He is Managing Editor of Legal Issues of Economic Integration (Kluwer) Theme Developer for International Economic Law at Oxford International Organizations. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge, an LLM in International Law from the Sorbonne Law School, and a Bachelor’s in Law from the University of São Paulo. He integrates the roster of dispute settlement panellists of the World Trade Organization, where he was previously a Dispute Settlement Lawyer, and of the European Union (for trade as well as sustainable development).

Kathleen Claussen is Professor of Law at Georgetown University. She is the author of more than 40 articles and essays concerning trade, investment, and international dispute settlement, among other related research areas. She has also acted as counsel or arbitrator in over two dozen international disputes. She is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law, published by Oxford University Press. Professor Claussen is a graduate of the Yale Law School, Queen’s University Belfast (where she was a Mitchell Scholar), and Indiana University where she was a Wells Scholar.