“I believe that environmental issues will dominate all aspects of multilateral discussions for the rest of the decade at least. To date, however, the conversations have tended to evolve separate sets of people. Often the environmental people are not talking to the trade people – even in their own company or government. The forum on Trade, Environmental Sustainability and the SDGs (TESS) is a bold new attempt to widen the conversation and thus stimulate cross-fertilization of ideas, knowledge, and perspective. This is why we are so pleased to host the Forum. I hope you’ll join this critical discussion via TESS!”

Joost Pauwelyn is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and Co-Director of the Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration (CTEI). He is also the Murase Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (since 2014). Previously he was Professor of Law at Duke University (2002-2007). He has also taught at Neuchâtel, Columbia, NYU, Stanford and Harvard law schools and worked as legal adviser for the WTO Secretariat (1996-2002). From 2007 to 2014, he was Senior Advisor with the law firm of King & Spalding.

Joost specializes in international economic law, in particular trade law and investment law, and its relationship to public international law. He also frequently advises governments and industry in WTO dispute settlement and investment arbitration and is a leading force behind the global www.tradelab.org network of legal clinics on international economic law.

From 2015 to 2020, Joost was the Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law. In late 2020, Professor Pauwelyn was appointed to the WTO’s multi-party interim appeal arrangement (MPIA, nominated by the EU).

Joost received degrees from the Universities of Namur and Leuven, Belgium as well as Oxford University and holds a doctorate from the University of Neuchâtel. He was appointed on the roster of WTO panelists and as arbitrator under Free Trade Agreements and the Energy Charter Treaty.

Joost is the author of one of the leading case books on International Trade Law (Aspen, 2016, 3nd ed., with A. Guzman and J. Hillman) and, most recently, co-editor of “Rethinking Participation in Global Governance: Challenges in Financial and Health Institutions” (OUP, 2021) and “Building Legal Capacity For a More Inclusive Globalization” (2019). He has also authored or co-edited, amongst other works, “Assessing the World Trade Organization – Fit for Purpose?” (CUP, 2017), The Use of Economics in International Trade and Investment Disputes (CUP, 2017), The Foundations of International Investment Law (OUP, 2014), Informal International Lawmaking (OUP, 2012), and The Transformation of World Trade (Michigan Law Review, 2005).