{"id":10,"date":"2016-05-30T16:25:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T20:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/?page_id=10"},"modified":"2016-07-06T11:42:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T15:42:02","slug":"1-why-is-sustainable-development-important-for-trade-and-investment-agreements","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/5-investment-provisions\/1-why-is-sustainable-development-important-for-trade-and-investment-agreements\/","title":{"rendered":"5.1 Preamble and Objectives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As noted in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/3-environmental-provisions\/3-2-preamble\/\">Section 3.2<\/a>, the preamble to an international agreement plays an important role in describing negotiating goals. It is also critically important in guiding its interpretation, including in dispute settlement processes. In order to ensure that environmental considerations are part of any interpretation and application of the agreement, parties need to go beyond just trade-related and purely economic statements. They can include affirmations that economic objectives should not trump other objectives, or can make reference to specific international principles and guidelines to illustrate the parties\u2019 common understanding on environment protection and other issues relating to sustainable development.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to preambles, many international agreements include an article on the purposes and objectives of the parties to highlight the main goals of the international agreement. Like the preamble, this article will act as a guideline for the parties and dispute settlement bodies when they try to interpret or apply a particular provision of the international agreement. A properly drafted article on purposes and objectives gives added weight to the preamble, which does not have the same legal force as operative provisions within the treaties. Some international agreements have incorporated into the article environment and sustainable development principles, and the need for balance between the states\u2019 sustainable development objectives and the protection of investors\u2019 interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As noted in Section 3.2, the preamble to an international agreement plays an important role in describing negotiating goals. It is also critically important in guiding its interpretation, including in dispute settlement processes. In order to ensure that environmental considerations are part of any interpretation and application of the agreement, parties need to go beyond<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/5-investment-provisions\/1-why-is-sustainable-development-important-for-trade-and-investment-agreements\/\" title=\"Read5.1 Preamble and Objectives\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":76,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"0"},"class_list":["post-10","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}