Strategic Linkages: The Evolving Role of Trade Agreements in Global Environmental Governance

Abstract

Recently negotiated linkages between trade and environmental agreements have the potential to enhance environmental regime effectiveness in ways that have been impossible under environmental treaties alone. Specifically, the 2009 U.S.—Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA) contains the most prescriptive environmental directives found in any U.S. trade agreement to date and pioneering provisions linking environmental treaty implementation to the TPA’s much stronger dispute-settlement procedures. The combination of these two elements has begun to catalyze Peru’s implementation of relevant environmental provisions and a corresponding potential for regime effectiveness improvements. Simultaneously, these prescriptive provisions contributed to catastrophic social unrest in Peru that must be acknowledged and addressed by policy makers in the United States and abroad before this agreement is exported to other countries.