Conceived as a pathfinder agreement, the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS) brings together four countries across three continents – Costa Rica, Iceland, New Zealand, and Switzerland – and was signed on 15 November 2024. Their stated goal with this new agreement is to harness trade cooperation to address climate change and other serious environmental challenges, thereby contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.

Conceived as a living agreement open to other Parties, the much-anticipated ACCTS provides legally binding trade disciplines in four main areas, namely environmental goods and services, fossil fuel subsidies, and voluntary ecolabelling. Since negotiations were launched in 2019, the agreement has attracted high hopes, with experts and governments alike keen to see the agreement break new ground on cooperation at the nexus of trade and climate.

The event began with a short presentation of the core pillars of the Agreement by policy makers involved in the negotiations. It will follow with perspectives from leading trade and climate experts from a variety of backgrounds, reflecting on ACCTS’ place within evolving international policy discussions on trade and climate, offering different regional perspectives and views on how and to what extent the precedent created by ACCTS can inform wider efforts to enhance international cooperation on trade policy to advance climate and sustainable development goals.

9:00 – 9:10 Welcome remarks

• Vangelis Vitalis, Deputy Secretary Trade and Economic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand
• Carolyn Deere Birkbeck, Executive Director, TESS

9:10 – 9:25 Presentation of the four action areas under the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS)

• Thomas Roth, ACCTS Chief Negotiator, Switzerland
• Ana Lizano, Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the WTO
• Michelle Slade, Principal Trade Adviser, Permanent Mission of New Zealand to the WTO
• Ögmundur Hrafn Magnússon, Counsellor, Deputy Permanent Representative to EFTA, Embassy of Iceland in Geneva

9:25 – 10:10 Stakeholder perspectives on how the ACCTS can support pathways for enhanced trade cooperation

• Greg Messenger, Professor of Trade Law and Policy, University of Bristol
  
• Peter Wooders, Geneva Platform for Resilient Value Chains
  
• David Vivas Eugui, UN Trade and Development
  
• Clara Brandi, German Institute of Development and Sustainability
  
• Shunta Yamaguchi, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
• Alice Tipping, International Institute for Sustainable Development
  

10:10 – 10:25 Q&A

10:25 – 10:30 Concluding remarks