News & Stories

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.

New Publication: Kick-starting diffusion – Explaining the varying frequency of PTAs’ environmental clauses by their initial conditions

why certain environmental provisions diffuse more often than others?

Most recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include environmental provisions, as documented on TRENDanalytics. Often trade negotiators do not reinvent the wheel and copy environmental provisions that have been included in earlier PTAs. For example, while the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, signed in 2018, entails a record number of environmental provisions, only two […]

Trade and civil society: Do participatory provisions in trade agreements enhance civil society participation?

Trade and civil society

  The role of civil society was a hotly debated topic in the context of trade policies and trade agreements such as TTIP and CETA (Eliasson and Huet 2018). More recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include provisions that explicitly demand the participation of non-state actors such as non-governmental organisation (NGOs), citizens as well as the […]

Environmental provisions in NAFTA 2.0 – Micro-level policymaking under the radar?

  The North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”) entered into force in 1994 between the US, Canada and Mexico is generally acknowledged to be the first major preferential trade agreement (PTA) comprehensively addressing environmental issues. During the G20 summit,  NAFTA has been superseded by the recently negotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA“).