27th March 2009

Rebuilding global trade: Proposals for a fairer, more sustainable future

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As G20 leaders gather in London on 2 April, the focus of their agenda will be on working together to promote effective, coordinated responses to the global economic crisis and to the state of global trade. In the context of the crisis, the immediate priority of many governments and trade experts is rightly to create and implement a strategy that will offset declining trade and investment, particularly in developing countries where the crisis threatens to impede economic growth and development progress made in recent years.

In an effort to address these pressing issues and provide suggestions for G20 leaders’ deliberations, ICTSD partnered with the Global Economic Governance Programme (GEG) to gather short essays from a broad range of scholars and experts around the world. Contributing authors were asked to consider, among other points, concrete proposals for trade-related actions that G20 leaders should undertake; challenges facing the multilateral trading system in the long term; and an examination of the reality and needs of developing countries in the context of the crisis.

And while the unique and valuable proposals in this compilation of essays not only provides suggestions for responding swiftly to the economic crisis, they also offer strategies for enduring interlocking crises in the area of food, fuel, climate, and poverty. Many of the essays emphasize the importance of an explicit focus on values, highlighting that efforts to stimulate growth, employment, and economic stability must also prioritize international commitments to development and sustainability. The significance of the quality of growth and trade, the distribution of their social beneﬁts, and their impacts on environmental sustainability are extensively highlighted throughout the text as well.

Together, ICTSD and GEG trust that this publication will prove to be a constructive contribution to debates on global economic governance and sustainable development.

To access the full PDF version of the compilation, please click here.