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Environment and Trade in a World of Interdependence (ENTWINED)

The ENTWINED project is a consortium initiative lead by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), a think tank funded by the Mistra foundation. IISD is a founding participant in the program and is responsible for conducting research on the impacts of sustainability standards on trade and environment, as well as related policy options for ensuring maximum uptake and impact across voluntary sustainability initiatives. Through its work in ENTWINED, IISD has produced several publications including:

• The Legality of PPMs under the GATT: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Trade Policy (PDF - 496 kb)
  Since the GATT Tuna-Dolphin decisions of the late 80s, many policymakers and other stakeholders have assumed the use of non-product-related processing and production methods (PPMs) as a basis for determining differential treatment between products to be "WTO illegal." This paper reviews the sustainable development case for PPMs as well as the relevant GATT case law. The paper suggests that that there is no legal basis for making this claim today.

• Voluntary Sustainability Standards and Economic Rents (PDF - 579 kb)
  Compliance with sustainability initiatives has become a virtual “prerequisite” for producers to access many mainstream markets in commodities sectors. These private voluntary systems can make important contributions to sustainable development, if the benefits of participation are fairly distributed between regions and supply chain actors. This paper uses a Global Value Chain framework to analyze how sustainability standards affect the distribution of economic benefits along international supply chains in the coffee, fisheries and forest products sectors. It examines how certification systems affect international trade flows, the generation of economic rents, and the accrual of costs and price premiums at different value chain nodes to determine where and by whom substantive economic benefits are enjoyed. The paper pays particular attention to impacts on commodity producers in developing countries.

• Voluntary Sustainability Standards and Value Chain Governance: How sutainability standards affect the distribution of decision-making power in global value chains (PDF - 733 kb)
  Sustainability standards affect decision-making processes in global value chains by appropriating and redistributing the power to set, implement and verify compliance with the terms of chain participation. If standards create a prominent role for disadvantaged stakeholders in organizational decision-making, they can make substantive contributions to participatory supply chain governance. This paper aims to assess the potential and actual impacts of select voluntary sustainability standards on participatory decision-making within global value chains in the coffee, forestry and fisheries sectors. A set of indicators is used to assess the compliance of standards organizations with seven principles of participatory governance: representation, accountability, checks and balances, equity, subsidiarity, effectiveness and efficiency.

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