Nature-Positive Trade for Sustainable Development: Opportunities to Promote Synergies Between the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Work on Sustainable Trade at the WTO

By Marianne Kettunen

Trade and trade-related policies and measures have a key role in promoting conservation, sustainable use, and restoration of biodiversity while supporting the critical economic and social dimensions of sustainable development.

This policy brief seeks to present a mutually supportive vision for biodiversity, sustainable trade, and sustainable development towards 2030 and beyond, using the WTO’s multilateral trade framework and the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as its backdrop.

It provides an overview of the global biodiversity framework and how trade and trade policies and measures are relevant to efforts to shape and implement this agenda. It focuses on identifying how work to bolster international cooperation on sustainable trade at the WTO can contribute to the delivery of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in December 2022, while supporting sustainable development.

The brief argues that realizing nature positive trade that works for sustainable development these opportunities will require fostering shared understandings between biodiversity and trade stakeholders of how different trade and trade-related policies and measures could be used so that they deliver benefits across all three agendas of biodiversity, sustainable trade, and sustainable development, underlining the importance of enhanced international cooperation in this effort.

The policy brief is co-published by the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) Trade, Development and the Environment Hub (TRADE Hub), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS).