Sustainable development chapters in trade agreements: the emergence of a governing principle?

The sustainable development goals were adopted less than ten years ago, to a mixed response. The welcome with which they were greeted by some was countered by others’ scepticism. Yet the contemporary context of ever more frequent extreme weather-related events, the consequences of which are variously environmental, social and economic, and invariably devastating, means that the universal commitment to sustainable development, and to achieving the sustainable development goals, has an urgency that was not felt even at the time of their adoption. The effects of such devastating climate related events, whether fire, flood, storm or drought, are exacerbated when they impact communities already burdened with poverty. The commitment to sustainable development recognises that there is an inherent inter-relationship between economic, social and environmental interests: that pursuit and protection of one cannot be sustained without the others. <br/>Yet the status and normative effect of ‘sustainable development’, which is variously viewed as a concept, an objective and sometimes a principle, remains contested. From that base line, sustainable development as an instrument of economic governance appears distant. <br/>There are signs, however, that in some contexts ‘sustainable development’ may have potential for realisation. This paper evaluates the implications of the increasingly common inclusion of sustainable development chapters in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements: its objective is to ascertain the extent to which this practice signifies the establishment of sustainable development as a core or universal principle of trade cooperation, shaping and/or underpinning trade relations, or whether it risks appearing to be a manifestation of social-green washing.<br/>