A comprehensive, critical analysis of the interactions between investment, trade and the environment. It examines the consequences of existing multilateral investment and trade regimes, including the WTO and the MAI for the environment, and asks how they should be reformed to protect it. In doing so, the text shows how these regimes can be greened without erecting protectionist barriers to trade that frustrate the development aspirations of poorer countries. The solution seeks to offer a way out of one of the most difficult dilemmas in international policy: how investment and trade can protect the environment without encouraging protectionism by the industrialized world.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Trade and foreign direct investment can have a positive effect on the environment

This book analyzes the interaction between international trade and investment on the one hand the environment on the other from a Least Developed Country (LDC) perspective. Accordingly, it investigates the experience of some African countries with a particular emphasis on Ethiopia. It explores the extent to which the WTO regime, as it is today, is environment-friendly. It examines the adequacy of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) general exception under Art. XX (b and g) in enabling the WTO members comply with their rights and obligations under MEAs and other laws. It finds that the current WTO regime could have negative implications for Ethiopia's environmental concerns upon accession.

Many governments are increasingly recognising the need to ensure that trade and investment agreements reflect environmental concerns to help achieve overarching environmental goals and to increase their public acceptability. In particular, investment liberalisation and protection, as well as environmental sustainability are essential elements to consider in these agreements to foster economic integration and require coherent policy approaches. In this context, this report investigates possible approaches that can help ensure policy coherence between investment and environment related provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs). As investment related articles appear not only in RTAs but more broadly in bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and in other international investment agreements (IIAs), the work extends to trade and investment agreements that encompass RTAs, BITs and other IIAs. The report highlights available practices to ensure that investment related provisions reaffirm the domestic environmental policy space.

This book focuses on profiling, from both literature-based and primary research points of orientation, instances of land grabs and/or acquisitions with a focus on the implications of land grabs for trade, investment and development policy in Africa under the global green economy transition agenda. In many instances, case studies and examples paint a picture that could be of use to policy-makers. Overall, the book advocates a 'satisfy-satisfy' orientation when land deals are made, as well as total transparency from key actors, building grassroots negotiation capacity and awareness. To illustrate some of the emerging issues in terms of land-grabs, acquisition and their implications for trade, investment and development policies, the sixth Trade Policy Training Centre in Africa (trapca) conference took place in Arusha, Tanzania on 24 and 25 November 2011. The conference had two objectives: (1) to come up with concrete policy interventions and recommendations that would harness foreign investment in land on the continent; and (2) to publish this edited book of selected papers presented at the conference that met the rigorous specifications laid down by the editors and publishers. One of the major revelations to emerge from the Conference was that 'there is no vacant land in Africa'. In addition, participants took the view that land deals in Africa needed to be done on a 'satisfy-satisfy-satisfy' rather than a 'win-win-win' basis. This book is jointly published by trapca and the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA).

This report reviews the experience with green lending in the SME sector in Georgia. The analysis identifies the main challenges with lending to SMEs for green projects and discusses possible solutions. The report, in particular, looks at the role of the government and the policy instruments it can use to stimulate higher demand for green lending in the SME sector.

Can China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promote sustainable development, alongside its primary aims of increasing commercial connectivity with China’s partners? In discussions of the BRI the focus has tended to be on the implications for infrastructure construction, connectivity, and economic diplomacy. Rather less attention has been paid to its potential impact on sustainability. The initiative has not only set principles to prevent climate change and promote sustainable development, but also pledged to align with the UN’s environmental objectives. The contributors to this volume describe and evaluate the consequent policy coordination in the areas of green finance, green energy, and sustainable development in the Belt and Road regions. They examine both the challenges and opportunities of these projects, and the role that Hong Kong can play in supporting their assessment, finance, and implementation. With contributions from authors based in mainland China, Hong Kong, Australia, Qatar, the UK, and the US – with experience in corporate social responsibility, international finance, environmental policy, and international relations – this book presents a thorough and rigorous analysis of the green side of the BRI. A valuable resource for scholars of the BRI and its many implications for China, its partners, and the development of sustainable infrastructure.

The concept of green growth, coupled with one of green economy and low carbon development, is a global concern especially in the face of the multiple crises that the world has faced in recent years - climate, oil, food, and financial crises. In East Asia, this concept is regarded as the key in transforming cheap-labour dependent, export-oriented industries towards a more sustainable development. Green Growth and Low Carbon Development in East Asia examines the beginnings of low carbon, green growth in practice in East Asia and how effectively it has directed East Asian nations, especially Korea, China and Japan, to put environment and climate challenges as the core target zone for investment and growth. Special focus is paid to energy and international trade - areas in which these nations compete with pioneered nations of Europe and the United States to develop renewable energy industries and enhance their international competitiveness. On the basis of the lessons learned in East Asia, together with a comparison of Russia, this book discusses the applicability and limitations of this developmental approach taken by the developing nations and resource-rich emerging economies, including the conditions and contexts in which nations are able to transition into sustainable development through the use of low carbon, green growth strategies.

This book explores the role of trade remedies in liberalising environmental trade and discouraging environmentally harmful trade. As trade remedies can pose a significant obstacle to environmental trade, this book outlines how trade negotiators can implement restrictions on the application of trade remedies on environmental goods. It also assesses whether and how investigating authorities can account for differences in environmental protection standards in trade remedy investigations and considers what a possible 'trade remedy' for environmental harm might look like. Although the book concludes that trade remedies will remain a trade instrument primarily driven by economic and competitiveness concerns, it demonstrates how environmental considerations can guide trade remedy policy, how investigating authorities can properly account for the environmental costs of production, and how the limited policy space available in the WTO Agreements on Trade Remedies can be used to pursue green policy goals.