Highest Priority Trade Provisions Related to Sustainable Development and Climate Change: Streamlining Climate Change Commitments in Horizontal Chapters of EU-Americas FTAs

This paper examines the role of climate change in trade relations between the EU and the Americas and the manners in which inter-regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) address climate change. The assessments of these FTAs demonstrate a need for more ambitious climate provisions, going beyond commitments in trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters and including the provision of incentives to exchanges in green goods and technologies. Besides making climate commitments more enforceable, it argues, climate ambition requires acting 'horizontally' on FTAs. Thus, the EU should prioritize careful drafting of non-TSD chapters over more extensive but less enforceable TSD chapters, since actual climate friendly through specific trade commitments are the way forward.