Webinar on report launching: How can international trade policy help tackle plastic pollution?

The Global Governance Centre at the Graduate Institute, the Forum on Trade, Environment and the SDGs (TESS), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Geneva Environment Network (GEN), the Geneva Trade Platform (GTP) and UNEP Environment and Trade Hub invite you to an online launch of a new report, “How can trade policy help tackle plastic pollution? Trends, actors and policy options for international cooperation” by Carolyn Deere Birkbeck and Mahesh Sugathan.

The report aims to facilitate an informed discussion of policy options among a diversity of relevant stakeholders, including environmental NGOs, the business sectors, government, international organisations and the research community working on the challenges of plastic pollution.

The report: 

• Provides strategic analysis of linkages between trade and sustainability challenges in the plastics sector, including how and to what extent trade policies could form part of the solution to plastic pollution; 
• Maps the range of trade policy options and interventions that could help reduce plastic pollution, while also noting how and where trade policies can erect barriers to or threaten national plastic pollution reduction efforts; 
• Identifies a number of potential pathways for aligning trade and trade policy with plastic pollution goals, including through international environmental processes and agreements, international trade diplomacy – at the WTO and UNCTAD as well as at the regional and bilateral level – and cooperation through international economic organisations; and
• Proposes policy priorities and identifies research needs

The research for this report was supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts. This event is part of a wider project on Transforming the Global Plastics Economy, led by the Global Governance Centre in partnership with UNCTAD, and financed by the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS). This event is co-sponsored by the Global Governance Centre, the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Geneva Environment Network (GEN), the Geneva Trade Platform (GTP) and UNEP Environment and Trade hub.