Remaking the Global Trading System for a Sustainable Future Project

The Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future Project aims to rethink the foundations for international commerce and develop a WTO reform agenda to better position this critical international organization to meet the needs of the current moment and better align the trading system with the world community’s commitment to a sustainable future. The Project will map out where the world needs to go over the next decade to address economic inequality, achieve the transition to a clean energy future, and advance other dimensions of the sustainable development vision – and specify what the trading system’s role should be in promoting the transformation required. It will also explore the reasons that the trade regime has come under political attack and how the WTO’s direction, structure, and rules might be reconfigured to respond. It will further identify other entities, institutions, and international organizations with which those in the trade world should work to deliver the requisite reforms  – as well as champions who can lead this effort both inside and outside the trading system.

Led by 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, and Jan Yves Remy, Director of the University of the West Indies International Trade Law, Policy, and Services in Barbados, the Remaking Trade Project will also engage with thought leaders across the world in an effort to re-think the intellectual logic and economic underpinnings of global trade with an eye toward broadening public understanding and political support around the world for a re-geared structure of trade and improved global governance as critical elements of an environmentally secure, prosperous, equitable, and peaceful world.

Project Phases

  • The Remaking the Global Trading System for a Sustainable Future Project was launched in June 2021 with a virtual symposium focused on the lessons to be learned about how best to frame and advance a trade regime reform agenda in light of considerations and negotiations leading to the launch of the WTO a generation ago in the mid-1990s. At that time, the first efforts to bring sustainable development into the structure of trading system took place. This symposium highlighted the perspectives of a number of the WTO “founders” who led the early efforts to fold a commitment to sustainability into the WTO and supported an ongoing dialogue aimed at ensuring that “trade and the environment” issues were addressed.

  • Development of the reform agenda will be guided by a Steering Committee that draws quite consciously on both the “old guard” of the trade community and a “next generation” of trade thought leaders.

  • The Project’s reform agenda will emerge from a series of workshops to be held at a variety of venues across the world over the next 12 months. Each workshop will bring together 30-35 thought leaders for a deep dive into a specific problem (or related set of concerns) facing the trading system. These gatherings will explore the contours of the issues presented, the reasons for the pushback they create against the trading system, alternative paths forward, and an assessment of the reforms that are required. The current list of workshop topics includes: (1) climate change, (2) food and agriculture, (3) social dimensions of sustainability including inequality, labor and worker impacts, public health cooperation, and gender, (4) finance and sustainable development, (5) materials, waste, and the circular economy, and (6) oceans, fisheries, and the Blue Economy, (7) sustainable transport, supply chains, aviation, shipping, and (8) information technologies, digital opportunities, and innovation as a driver of sustainability.

    Each workshop will be undergirded with a set of white papers that present the critical issues and possible reform proposals. Thought leaders have been (or are being) commissioned to write white papers on the following topics:

    • poverty alleviation and inequality;

    • sustainable development finance – and just transition elements;

    • labor and worker impacts;

    • sustainable agriculture – water, biodiversity, and food security;

    • gender and economic empowerment;

    • carbon clubs;

    • waste and the circular economy;

    • oceans – fisheries, plastic waste, and the Blue Economy;

    • public health cooperation and pandemic response;

    • strategic pathways for trade policy reform;

    • border carbon adjustment mechanisms;

    • trade rules regarding renewable energy;

    • fossil fuel subsidies;

    • sustainable transport – shipping, aviation, and supply chains;

    • clean tech dissemination including prospects for an Environmental Goods Agreement;

    • digital opportunities for climate change action and trade’s role in promoting them

    • innovation and trade

    The workshop series launched in September 2022 with a 3-day program on “Climate, Sustainability, and Trade” held at the Tufts Conference Center in Talloires, France. This workshop included 35 high-powered climate and trade experts from the trade community, national governments, business, NGOs, foundations, and the academic world. The charge to this group was to identify: (1) the potential for ensuring that the trading system reinforces -- and does not undermine -- the global commitment to deep decarbonization (in line with the Glasgow Climate Pact goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050), (2) strategies for advancing the required WTO reforms, and (3) an actionable set of trade initiatives that could be advanced at the COP27 Climate Change Summit Meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in November 2022.

    (1) a problem statement that specifies the challenge the issue presents for the trading system,

    (2) a diagnosis of the reasons that the existing trade regime is seen as misaligned with the public values or policy concerns underlying the issue,

    (3) options for addressing these concerns,

    (4) specific reform proposals, and

    (5) an assessment of the pathway to reform including potential “champions” to lead the effort and obstacles to be overcome.

  • Building on the series of workshops and white papers, the Project leadership team, guided by the Steering Committee, will develop a reform blueprint for the global trading system. This framework will fully account for intersections of trade and other policy arenas and propose action elements designed to ensure better trading system alignment with competing policy goals and cooperation with other international organizations. The overarching aim would be a game plan for remaking the trading system for the 21st century in a form that supports sustainable development and global economic cooperation – and that reinforces and does not undermine other fundamental public values.

    The Remaking Trade Project will go beyond developing a sustainability vision and reform blueprint to engage critical decision-makers both inside and outside the trading system in conversations that will explain the proposals for change and work to build a coalition to support the reform agenda. The Project will also engage with an array of other entities, institutions, and international organizations that will need to be partners in the effort to re-gear global commerce for a sustainable future.