Inclusion, Transparency, and Enforcement: How the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement Fails the Sustainability Test
Inclusion, Transparency, and Enforcement: How the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement Fails the Sustainability Test
Laura Kehoe,1,2, * Tiago N.P. dos Reis,3 Patrick Meyfroidt,3,4 Simon Bager,3 Ralf Seppelt,5,6 Tobias Kuemmerle,7,8 Erika Berenguer,9,10 Michael Clark,2,11 Kyle Frankel Davis,12,13,14 Erasmus K.H.J. zu Ermgassen,3,4 Katharine Nora Farrell,15,16 Cecilie Friis,8 Helmut Haberl,17 Thomas Kastner,18 Katie L. Murtough,19 U. Martin Persson,20 Alfredo Romero-Mun˜ oz,7 Chris O’Connell,21 Viola Valeska Schafer,22 Malika Virah-Sawmy,7 Yann le Polain de Waroux,23 and Joseph Kiesecker24
1 The Nature Conservancy, London, UK
2 Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
3 Earth and Life Institute, Universite´ Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
4 Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, Brussels, Belgium
5 Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Leipzig, Germany
6 Institute of Geoscience & Geography, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany
7 Geography Department, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
8 Integrative Research Institute on Transformations on Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
9 Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
10 Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK 11Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
12 Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, NJ, USA
13 Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, NJ, USA
14 Data Science Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
15 Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Universidad del Rosario, Bogota´ , Colombia
16 Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
17 Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
18 Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany
19 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
20 Physical Resource Theory, Department of Space, Earth, and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden
21 School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
22 Kronberg, Germany
23 Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
24 The Nature Conservancy, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Trade agreements could help to protect human rights, critical ecosystems, and the climate—but only if sustainability becomes a cornerstone of international trade. The EU-Mercosur trade agreement fails to meet our three tenets of sustainable trade agreements: (1) inclusion of local communities, (2) transparency mechanisms to trace commodities and provide open-access information, and (3) enforcement to legally uphold sustainability commitments.
Publication details
Kehoe, L. et al., Inclusion, Transparency, and Enforcement: How the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement Fails the Sustainability Test, One Earth (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.08.013
