What is the role of civil society actors in the assessment of trade agreements with regard to their sustainability impact? The book chapter authored by Markus Knigge and Nicole Kranz analyses the underlying processes and contexts and makes suggestions for the effective involvement of stakeholders in the assessment process at the EU level.

Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) play a substantial role in the financing of infrastructure in developing countries. As the activities of ECAs are backed-up by public resources, national governments have the power to set guidelines for ECA lending policies. Most governments include social and environmental aspects in their ECA guidelines. This book section has a closer look at the role of transparency, information disclosure and participation in the cover decisions of ECAs.

In cooperation with the European SUSTRA-Network Ecologic analyses the relationship between trade, environment and sustainable development. As a part of the project, Ecologic convened an international workshop on the architecture of global governance of trade and sustainable development which focussed on the global institutional set-up, the relationship between multilateral environmental agreements and WTO rules as well as the role of non-State actors in the international fora. The results of the workshop were summarised and published in a policy brief.

The results of the workshop entitled "The Architecture of the Global System of Governance of Trade and Sustainable Development" that took place on 9 and 10 December 2002 in Berlin have been published in an Ecologic Brief. Based on the background paper of the workshop and the debates which took place during the discussions, this brochure seeks to give an overview of the complex issue of the global governance of trade and sustainable development and to convey to a wider audience the main questions facing the research community.