WTO rules on farm goods and fish: Towards more equitable, sustainable, and efficient global markets?

Climate change is likely to intensify the many challenges governments face in implementing the 2030 Development Agenda, such as the new sustainable development goal to end hunger and malnutrition. More equitable, sustainable, and efficient global markets for agriculture and fisheries will be key to achieving the level of ambition the international community has set itself in this area. Although progress in agreeing new multilateral disciplines at the WTO has been at best incremental in recent years, E15 experts have identified how existing disciplines can be adapted to help meet future food demand.

In this TDS session, the speakers explored how markets, policies, and global rules are evolving and discussed how the policy options identified by the E15 expert groups on Agriculture and Food Security and Fisheries and Oceans are relevant to the WTO agenda.

Building on ICTSD’s twenty-year history of encouraging innovative thinking on trade and sustainable development issues at WTO Ministerial Conferences, 2015’s Trade and Development Symposium (TDS) acted as a crucial platform for intellectual enquiry and dialogue on the future of the multilateral trading system. The E15Initiative stream at the Trade and Development Symposium focused on dialogue around the key deliverables the Initiative’s world class experts released in January 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Discussions provided an exclusive preview of the policy options that have been developed over four years by some of the world’s most pre-eminent trade policy experts.