Sustainable Development and the Commodities Challenge: The Eventual ‘Greening’ of the World Trade Organization?

Abstract

Comprehensive and concerted action by the international community is required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda. Yet, the 2030 Agenda is largely silent on a number of key issues of relevance to international regulation, most notably the impact of commodities on sustainable development. This article identifies the central role that trade in commodities plays in sustainable development while outlining the inherent tensions within the fragmented international regulation of commodities’ trade. This article looks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a site of innovative global governance in tackling the impact of one commodity–fish–examining how the international community and the WTO have been shifting the narrative in meeting the SDGs from one of overlapping or conflicting regimes to cooperative governance.