How trade deals can contribute to environmental governance

Trade agreements increasingly include precise and ambitious environmental provisions. Despite the encompassing nature of these provisions, studies on their drivers and consequences remain scarce. This seminar will discuss findings from a novel dataset of 290 different types of environmental provision in 730 trade agreements. These findings are of particular relevance for research on treaty design, legal innovation, linkage politics, norm diffusion, and treaty effectiveness.

Jean-Frédéric Morin is a Professor at the Political Science Department of Université Laval (Québec City, Canada) and holds the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy. Jean-Frédéric’s current research projects look at how international institutions innovate, interact and evolve in the fields of trade, intellectual property, investment and environmental governance.

His work has appeared in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Organizations, Global Environmental Politics and Review of International Political Economy. He is also the co-author of two recent books, Global Environmental Politics (OUP, 2020) and Greening through Trade (MIT Press, 2020).