Sustainable Development through Regional Integration Agreements

Legal research is needed to define whether regional trading agreements really promote more trade in the aggregate on a global scale as is claimed by their defenders or whether they lead principally to diversion of trade within expanded regional groupings, and whether their political advantages outweigh their economic consequences.

The CISDL has undertaken to develop a series of legal research papers to determine whether RIAs can serve as platforms for the adoption of important sustainable development policies on the regional level. The first paper was presented in a panel on ‘Governance, Economic Development and the Law’ in Montreal on Nov 30, 2004. The second paper was presented in the British International Law Association’s Annual Conference on ‘Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO System” in Edinburgh on May 28, 2005, and was accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the resulting book. Several papers, on Asian RIAs, Americas RIAs, the European Union and the Australia – US Free Trade Agreement, were published as chapters in Sustainable Developments in World Trade Law (Kluwer Law International, 2005).

In 2005 – 2007, this research will be expanded, through the development of working papers on investment and sustainable development in RIAs, and competition law and sustainable development in RIAs, as part of a larger research project coordinated by the McGill University Faculty of Law and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.