The SRC is pleased to announce the launch of its webpage on Trade and Climate Action that houses all of the work being done by the SRC on the trade/climate change interface. In addition, through its Director, the SRC is involved in a Remaking the Global Trading System for a Sustainable Future Project, together with Professor Dan Esty at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School, Professor Diana Van Patten at the Yale School of Management, Professor Joel Trachtman and Dean Rachel Kyte at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.  More information about that Project is available here.

International trade is often championed as a powerful engine of economic growth, with the potential to elevate living standards worldwide. The World Trade Organization (WTO), which stands at the forefront of global trade rules, negotiations, and dispute resolution, encapsulates this vision in its preamble, urging its members to engage in trade relations “with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development.”

UNCTAD and SRC Technical and Statistical Report

A Deep Dive Into Ocean-Related Measures in the Nationally Determined Contributions of Small Island Developing States

The SRC is pleased to share Version 2.0 of the Remaking Trade for a Sustainable Future Project’s (RTP) Villars Framework. This version incorporates feedback received during the first Villars Framework Summit in September 2023, and contains a new chapter on the social dimensions of sustainability. 

Visit the Remaking Trade for a Sustainable Future website for more information. 

The Caribbean region throws up unique challenges for
both the climate change and trade communities. Being
among the most vulnerable regions in the world to the
impacts of rising global temperatures, the small island
developing states (SIDS) of the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) stand to face severe environmental, economic,
and infrastructural losses in the coming years. On the trade
front, the region still accounts for a very small share of global
trade, has registered overall declines in terms of global
competitiveness and participation in global value chains,
and is a relatively small player in negotiating and dispute
settlement for a at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

As recognition of the urgency of climate action increases, debate is growing on the need to spur a paradigm shift to support sustainability in the international trading system. Moreover, critical gaps remain on how the links between trade, finance and climate action can be more ambitious and better promote a just transition and climate-resilient development. 

The SRC is pleased to join forces with Aligning Climate and Economic Governance (ACEGOV), the Forum on Trade, Environment and the SDGs (TESS), and the Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future Project, on Thursday, February 2, 2023 at 10:00 am to deliver this 1.5-hour webinar to discuss these issues. 

Why the Bridgetown Initiative on Climate Finance is Good For Trade

By Dr Jan Yves Remy

It was not so long ago, in March 2022, that Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados went to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva seeking concrete answers on how the WTO was helping developing countries with one of their most pressing needs – financing their climate adaptation and mitigation efforts to transition to green economies and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Fast forward just seven months, and so much has changed. The WTO’s Director General, Dr. Ngozi Okojo-Iweala, has made sustainability and climate change action one of the central issues defining her administration, with her efforts to date culminating with the release of the World Trade Report 2022 on Climate Change and International Trade at the climate change negotiations in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (COP27).  In turn, PM Mottley has refined her thinking and broadened the appeal of her core message: that the “Bretton Woods” international financial institutions   – the IMF and the World Bank – must be reformed to help developing countries fund adaptation and cope with the irreversible loss and damage from climate change.  Dubbed the Bridgetown Initiative, PM Mottley’s proposals have received the nod from influential friends at COP27, like French President Macron, and look set to unleash a new wave of thinking about the way global institutions are approaching risk and pricing capital for climate-resilient projects across the world.