Achieving sustainable trade post-Brexit: the UK and beyond

Overview

This project explores how principles of sustainability can be enshrined in trade agreements, focusing primarily on the UK’s future trade relationship with the EU and other partners. Foregrounding sustainability as a goal of UK trade policy will help to ensure the continuation of relatively high environmental and social protections, and promote them in our trading partners. The research contributes to the SSRP’s goal of developing cross-cutting pathways to sustainable development.

• Sustainable Development Goals

  This project examined the following SDGs:

  SDG 1 – No Poverty
  SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
  SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
  SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities
  SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
  SDG 13 – Climate Action

  Find out more about the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Project description

Trade agreements comprise an important source of foreign policy influence and also shape the rules and regulation that domestic companies must follow. Ensuring that such agreements do not undermine social welfare and environmental policy goals is thus essential to creating policy coherence and implementing sustainable development. The UK’s departure from the EU provides an opportunity to identify and advocate approaches for integrating SDGs into trade policy in the UK and beyond. In this context, the project comprises of two strands.

The first strand focusses on sustainability impact assessment (SIA), the process through which the potential environmental, economic and social impacts of free trade agreements are identified. We modelled the SIA process – its major stages, who is involved in them and how they feed into the rest of the process. Work focused in particular on the role of public participation in SIA procedures. Identifying appropriate opportunities for meaningful public participation before and during the negotiation of new trade agreements will help to inform the negotiations and legitimise any decisions that are taken.

The second strand examined limits, opportunities and coherence issues that arise in utilising trade agreements to pursue environmental and social welfare goals. Taking the EU as a starting point, but also examining major economies such as the US, this research took stock of existing FTA models and best practices.

Listen to Principal Investigator, Dr Emily Lydgate, outline this SSRP project and how it converges with her research interests in the complexities around regulating for sustainability.

Timeline and funding

Timeline	January 2018-December 2018
Funding	£51,234

Related work

• Environmental protection sidelined on the UK’s Brexit agenda
• SSRP Policy Brief: Assessing the sustainability impacts of trade agreements [PDF 1.42MB]

Useful links

• UK Trade Policy Observatory

• Current and ongoing EU SIAs

The team

• Principle Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigators

  Principal Investigator

  • Dr Emily Lydgate, School of Law, Politics and Sociology

  Co-investigators

  • Dr Rob Amos, School of Law, Politics and Sociology
• Project team
  • Professor Jim Rollo, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) Deputy Director
  • Dr Peter Holmes,  University of Sussex Business School and UKTPO Fellow
  • Chiara Armeni, School of Law, Politics and Sociology

  External partner

  • Maximiliano Mendez-Para, Senior Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute

Where we worked

University of Sussex.