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Trade

Trade

Both cross-border trade in goods and services and foreign investment are important parts of the global economy. States have undertaken to follow certain rules by signing international trade and investment agreements. From a sustainability perspective, trade and investment are ambiguous: for example, the international transport of goods causes emissions, but can also contribute to the global diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

Ecologic Institute examines the tension between trade and the environment, especially from a legal and economic perspective, and makes proposals on how to make trade and investment agreements as environmentally friendly as possible. Reviewing evolving policies and regulatory proposals for their compatibility with international agreements is an important part of the Institute's work. In addition, Ecologic Institute develops recommendations on how to make international trade in resources along supply chains more environmentally friendly and how to prevent the illegal trade in natural resources.

Contact

Resource Conservation + Circular Economy

Trade

Evaluation

Economics

Finance

Indicators

Digitalization

Health

Aaron Best
Coordinator Digitalization and AI
Senior Fellow

Environmental Law – Ecologic Legal

Land Use

Climate

Plastics

Arctic

Trade

Governance

Economics

Energy

Trade

Climate

Evaluation

Finance

Education

Industry

Benjamin Görlach
Head, Economics and Policy Assessment
Senior Fellow

Climate

Governance

Environmental Law – Ecologic Legal

Trade

Dr. Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf
Head, International and European Governance
Senior Fellow
Selected Projects for Trade

Trade and Investment Agreements

 
In 2019, the EU and the countries of the South American trade bloc Mercosur concluded negotiations on a trade agreement. The negotiated text of the agreement includes a chapter on trade and sustainability. The rules on forest protection are weak, however, and the... Read more
 
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International trade agreements can have an impact on consumers in different ways. On the one hand, they can lead to more or cheaper products to become available for consumers. On the other hand, these agreements contain rules for political and legal meaures that the... Read more
 
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Ecologic Institute with support from the Heinrich Boell Foundation compiled a study to provide factual background to the debate on regulatory cooperation under TTIP. The study contains an overview of existing models for achieving regulatory harmonisation, with a focus... Read more
 
International Law and Support for Renewable Energies
As renewable energy sources are more widely used and corresponding support systems expanded, the economic significance of the sector is also growing. This, in turn, also leads to a growing potential for trade disputes involving renewable energy production. In this... Read more

Supply Chains

 
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Retailers play an essential role in shaping product decisions via their own business choices—choices regarding which suppliers to work with, what items to stock, how to manage supply-chain operations, what information to provide to consumers, as well as how their own... Read more

Assessment of 10 Years EU Retail Forum for Sustainability

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Global demand for minerals is growing rapidly, driven by rapid population growth, urbanisation and an increasingly diverse range of technical applications. Global material supply chains linking the extraction, transport and processing stages of raw materials have become... Read more

Global Material Flows and Demand-supply Forecasting for Mineral Strategies (MinFuture)

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Resource extraction has often significant impacts on the environment. Ecologic Institute analyses for the German Federal Environment Agency governance instruments which can foster, establish and enforce global standards for environmentally sound raw material extraction.... Read more
 
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In this project, BIO IS, the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Ecologic Institute investigated approaches for verifying that claims made by companies on the environmental properties of products or their own overall environmental performance are... Read more

How to Verify Claims on the Environmental Properties of Products and Organizations?

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All projects on Trade
Selected Publications for Trade
 
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International trade agreements have repeatedly been criticized for promoting trade interests at the expense of other policy objectives, such as environmental protection. The fact that many trade agreements include dispute settlement mechanisms and sanctions for... Read more

Substance and Style: WTO judicial decision-making in 'trade and ...' cases von Dr. Christiane Gerstetter 2021, 634 S., geb., 118,– €, ISBN 978-3-8487-5768-8, (Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Europäische Rechtspolitik der Universität Bremen (ZERP), Bd. 78)

 
In Europe, limited information is available about the environmental characteristics of the vehicles stocks and of traded used vehicles in terms of vehicle's air pollutant and CO2 emissions. In this report Ecologic Institute and Fraunhofer ISI explore available national... Read more

Velten, Eike Karola; Clemens Brauer, Jan-Erik Thie (2020): Used vehicle trade and fleet composition in Europe. Final report of the project "Used vehicle trade and fleet composition in Europe" on behalf of the EEA. Ecologic Institute and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI: Berlin, Karlsruhe.

 
Climate Change 43|2019
With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the world of climate policy has changed, with important implications for the debate on carbon leakage. This report looks at how the risk of carbon leakage changes for different constellations of climate policy targets, how the... Read more

Görlach, Benjamin and Elizabeth Zelljadt (2019): Carbon Leakage Risks in the Post-Paris World. UBA Climate Change 43/2019. Dessau-Roßlau: Umweltbundesamt

 
The dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is one of the most active international courts. How the WTO's adjudicators decide cases is the topic of a book chapter authored by Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute. The book... Read more

Gerstetter, Christiane: Substance and Style - How the WTO Adjudicators Legitimize their Decisions, in: Andreas Follesdal and Geir Ulfstein: The Judicialization of International Law, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2018

All publications on Trade