{"id":487,"date":"2016-06-22T13:20:49","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T17:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/?page_id=487"},"modified":"2016-07-12T08:23:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T12:23:06","slug":"6-2-environmental-impact-assessments-in-trade-agreements","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/6-process\/6-2-environmental-impact-assessments-in-trade-agreements\/","title":{"rendered":"6.2 Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in Trade Agreements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1993 the OECD Ministerial Council recommended that \u201cgovernments should examine or review trade and environmental policies and agreements with potentially significant effects on the other policy area early in their development to assess the implications for the other policy area and to identify alternative policy options for addressing concerns.\u201d Currently, such impact assessments are mandated for all agreements signed by Canada, the EU and the United States. As well, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has carried out a number of impact studies of integration agreements for Latin American governments.<\/p>\n<p>Typically EIAs assess potential impacts along the lines of the classic fields of trade\u2013environment impacts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scale effects, or changes in the amount of economic activity<\/li>\n<li>Composition effects, or changes in national-level mix of economic activity<\/li>\n<li>Technology effects, or the impacts of the flow of new technologies (e.g., more efficient goods)<\/li>\n<li>Regulatory effects, or the impacts of legal and policy changes stemming from the agreement<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Public participation is a crucial element of successful impact assessment, and many assessment exercises actively seek out public opinion in meetings, workshops, hearings, etc. All potentially affected sectors of society should have the opportunity to contribute.<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of options to consider when designing the assessment:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Timing: ex post or ex ante (or both)<\/li>\n<li>Geographical scope: domestic impacts or international<\/li>\n<li>Thematic scope: what sorts of impacts will be considered?<\/li>\n<li>Analyst: conducted by government or by consultants?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1993 the OECD Ministerial Council recommended that \u201cgovernments should examine or review trade and environmental policies and agreements with potentially significant effects on the other policy area early in their development to assess the implications for the other policy area and to identify alternative policy options for addressing concerns.\u201d Currently, such impact assessments are<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/6-process\/6-2-environmental-impact-assessments-in-trade-agreements\/\" title=\"Read6.2 Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in Trade Agreements\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":124,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"0"},"class_list":["post-487","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\/487","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=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}