Reframing the Trade and Environment Linkage for Sustainable Development: Challenges for Renewable Energy Strategies

The trade and environment linkage has evolved over the years, but in light of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, a new framework is needed that better accounts for modern day challenges around climate change, energy demand, and increased fragmentation in governing structures for both trade and environmental issues.

Nations are developing renewable energy strategies to address some of these concerns and shift their domestic energy production away from fossil fuel and other greenhouse gas intensive industries. However, under current interpretations of relevant WTO covered agreements, challenges to trade compliance exist with respect to these domestic strategies. This book chapter will examine the ways in which the trade and environmental linkage has evolved over time; the challenges to the multilateral trade framework of local renewable energy governance structures; and the manner in which both the WTO and regional/plurilateral trade agreements may create opportunities for facilitating local renewable energy strategies.

Biography of the Speaker

Elizabeth Trujillo is currently a Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law. She has taught  Contracts,  International Sales,  International Trade, NAFTA, Trends in International Law and Sustainable Development, Trade, Investment, and Development. She was Professor of Law at Suffolk University Las School until this year, where she participated and co-­directed the Suffolk/University of Havana Program and also taught U.S.-­‐Cuba: Comparative Contracts,  Trade  and  Investment. She completed her tenure as Co-­‐Chair of the American Society for International Law's (ASIL) International Economic Law Interest Group in April 2015 and served on the ASIL Book Awards Committee for 2014-­‐2015. Her publications, examine the relationship between international trade and investment with domestic regulatory structures, specifically in the areas  of  energy  and the environment, antitrust law, and international consumer protection law. Most recently, Professor Trujillo was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship to write her book with Cambridge University Press, Shattered Prisms: Reconfiguring Trade and Sustainable Development in a Fragmented World. In furtherance of this book project, she is currently a Visiting Scholar  at  the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public  Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg, Germany.
 

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