The WTO as a Major Actor for Sustainable Development

Despite what is often stated by a mistaken narrative on the multilateral governance of the global economy, the WTO system promotes trade liberalisation not as an end in itself, but as a tool to achieve sustainable development. The Preamble of the Agreement establishing the WTO, in fact, unequivocally states that WTO Members “[r]ecogniz[e] that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living … expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development”. Coherently, a distinctive feature common to all the WTO Multilateral and Plurilateral Agreements is that of enshrining exception clauses, considering legitimate interests and the precautionary principle, in the light of which obstacles to trade for goods and services are WTO-compatible when they fulfil certain requirements to pursue non-trade values. In its 30-year practice, each institutional activity of the multilateral trading system – the dispute settlement mechanism, the daily management of the WTO Multilateral and Plurilateral Agreements by the WTO bodies, the WTO political pillar initiatives – has been highlighting the sustainability perspective of its wide and articulated legal framework. The purpose of the research project “L’Organizzazione mondiale del commercio quale protagonista dello sviluppo sostenibile nel rilancio del Sistema multilaterale”, co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale (MAECI))28, is to present and analyse the WTO as a major sustainability actor, also considering its reform efforts to promote fairness and inclusivity in the global economy, and better, more effective, management and functioning of the WTO Agreements and the WTO institutional structure. We humbly hope, with this book, to provide a constructive contribution to the debate on the reform of the WTO system, showing how sustainable development can be pursued and needs, to be achieved, also a renewed multilateral platform discussing innovative common trade rules and fostering constant dialogue.