The Sustainable Trade and Investment Law Initiative

The Sustainable Trade and Investment Law Initiative (STILI) is a dynamic programme dedicated to exploring the intersections between international trade, investment, and financial regimes with sustainable development objectives. Led by Legal Counsel Prof. Markus Gehring and coordinated by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), STILI engages in cutting-edge legal research and analysis to understand how these frameworks can be aligned—or are currently misaligned—with the achievement of climate goals, environmental protection, and social equity. In particular, STILI examines the legal and policy dimensions of international economic agreements to identify opportunities and barriers to the implementation of the Paris Agreement and countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

This project aims provide legal analysis and informed, engaged communities of practice to promote the highest level of climate ambition and sustainable development in the negotiation and update of EU trade and investment agreements. It generates technical analysis of EU economic agreements, comparing key provisions to global best legal practices, evaluating ongoing negotiations and encouraging meaningful, binding new climate commitments. The communities of practice includes negotiators, legal and policy experts, practitioners, and academics. By strengthening legal communities of practice on climate change and sustainable development, it builds legal expertise to help shape climate aspects of trade and investment debates in the EU, in partner countries and regions (such as Mercosur and Central America countries) and beyond. By enabling legal experts and communities of practice to engage with key ECF and broader networks, it helps to draft, in concrete textual terms, the contours of trade agreements better aligned with climate change objectives. 

Recognizing the complex geopolitical landscape and competing global priorities, the initiative also seeks to offer innovative, practical, and legally robust pathways to advance sustainability through economic law. Its global network of legal scholars and practitioners—from Latin America, Europe, New Zealand, and other regions—collaborates on policy briefs, capacity-building, and high-impact publications. Notably, STILI has contributed to two special journal issues: Legal Issues of Economic Integration (2023) and the upcoming issue of the European Foreign Affairs Review (2025). For more insights into the initiative’s ongoing work, see the latest CISDL reports here.

Objectives

  • Identify highest priority climate change challenges for key upcoming trade agreement negotiations (Mexico, Chile, Central America, Colombia, and Peru), and undertake careful legal analysis based on existing climate and sustainability related commitments in economic treaties, including existing commitments by the EU (eg, its TCA with the UK) and broader EU climate ambition (eg, the Green Deal);
  • Draft a legal technical paper providing an analysis of proposed climate and trade provisions to advance climate ambition in future EU trade agreements, summarizing options for concrete technical text proposals, including the NZ proposals and CBAM options, and publish the paper over social media and partners websites;
  • Convene online legal roundtables among trade, environment and climate law experts in the target jurisdictions of the Americas with potential to influence negotiations, to explore options, challenges, and areas of opportunity for changes, consulting law and policy experts and leaders, generating a short, clear report offering legal drafting options, and supporting their participation in ECF decision-maker dialogues and their efforts to inform key countries and regional institutions involved in new trade and investment negotiations.

CISDL has previously organised 4 expert online roundtables dedicated to four main EU trade relations:

  • 07 September 2022 (16:00-17:30 UK time) EU-Chile Negotiations – Round table Summary Proposal – EU-Chile – Final 09.2022

  • 20 September 2022 (16:00-17:30 UK time) EU-Mexico and Central Americas Drafts Agreement

  • 22 September 2022 (16:00-17:30 UK time) EU-Mercosur

  • 26 September 2022 (16:00-17:30 UK time) EU-Andean Countries

Lead Researchers

Prof. Markus Gehring, University Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge and a Fellow in Law at Hughes Hall / Lead Counsel, CISDL

Prof. Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor University of Cambridge / Senior Director CISDL

Project Manager

Mr. Marios Tokas, PhD Candidate Geneva Graduate Institute/ Trade and Investment Program Manager CISDL

Operation

Freedom-Kai Phillips, PhD Candidate University of Cambridge, Operations Director CISDL
Researchers

Prof. Jorge Cabrera, Professor University of Costa Rica/ Lead Counsel Biodiversity and Biosafety CISDL

Dr. Fabiano de Andrade Correa, Lead Counsel, Peace Justice and Governance CISDL

Prof. Javiera Cáceres, Instructor Professor, Institute of International Studies – University of Chile

Mr. Christian Delev, PhD Researcher, University of Cambridge/ Research Fellow CISDL

Mr. Miguel Saldivia, PhD Researcher, University of Cambridge

Research Assistants

Mr. Ignacio Antonio Sánchez González, Master Student, Institute of International Studies, Universidad de Chile

Ms. Yasmin Granados Torres, Lawyer, Notary Public and Certified mediator 

Ms. Diana Geraldine Quevedo Niño, MPhil Student in Environmental Policy, University of Cambridge

  • Prof. Alberto do Amaral Jr., Associate Professor, Department of International Law, Brazil
  • Prof. Alberto van Klaveren, Professor, Institute of International Studies, University of Chile / Former Viceminister of Foreign Affairs, Chile
  • Prof. Arthur Appleton, Adjunct Professor, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; Lawyer
  • Prof. Bradley Condon, Professor, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)
  • Prof. Felipe Muñoz Navia, Assistant Professor, Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile
  • Prof. Ilaria Espa, Senior Assistant Professor Università della Svizzera italiana/ Lead Counsel, Natural Resources, CISDL
  • Prof. José Manuel Álvarez Zárate, Professor, Univrsidad del Externado, Colombia
  • Dr. Dorotea López Giral, Director, Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile, Chile
  • Prof. Marcus Maurer de Salles, Professor, Federal University of São Paulo / Associate Researcher, Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Brazil
  • Prof. Pilar Moraga, Director, Environmental Law Center, Chile / CR2 Center for Climate and Resilience Research, Chile [link]
  • Prof. Rodrigo Polanco, Senior lecturer and academic coordinator of Master Programmes at the World Trade Institute (WTI), University of Bern/ Visiting Professor at the University of Chile
  • Prof. Tobias Stoll, Professor, University of Gottingen
  • Prof. Jaime Tijmes, Prof. Universidad de La Frontera, Chile
  • Prof. Fabiola Wüst, Assistant Professor, Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile, Chile
  • Dr. Alessandra Lehmen, President of the Brazilian Bar Environmental Law Commission, Rio Grande do Sul State
  • Dr. David Kleimann, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
  • Dr. Dominic Coppens, Senior Associate Sidley Austin LLP
  • Dr. Gregory Messenger, Associate Professor, University of Bristol Law School
  • Julieta Zelicovich, Assistant researcher at Argentina’s CONICET, Universidad Nacional del Rosario, Argentina
  • Lorena Beatriz Balbuena de Sanchez, Lawyer, Consultant and Legal Advisor
  • Ezio Costa, Executive Director, NGO Fima – Fiscalía del Medio Ambiente / “Environmental Prosecutor’s Office”, Chile
  • Nicolas J.S. Lockhart, Partner, Sidley Austin LLP, Geneva
  • Angélica Romero, Trade and Sustainable Development Division, Undersecretariat of International Economic Relations of Chile
  • María Amparo Albán, Founding Partner, Inter-American Institute on Justice and Sustainability
  • Elena Benaim, Policy Analyst, Third Way 
  • Soledad Leal Campos, Trade  and Sustainable Expert
  • Alice Tipping, Lead, Sustainable Trade and Fisheries Subsidies, International Institute for Sustainable Development
  • Stella Perantakou, Associate Sidley Austin LLP
  • Andreas Oeschger, Junior Trade Policy Analyst IISD
  • Rodrigo Yáñez, Former Vice Minister of Commerce, Chile
  • Ms. Florencia Sarmiento, Policy Analyst, IISD
  • Dr. Yilly Vanessa Pacheco, Senior Research Fellow, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany 
  • Mr. Pierre Leturcq, Policy Officer, Jacque Delors Institute
  • Mr. Pedro Cisterna Gaete, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh
  • Dr. Gerardo Vidigal, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam
  • Ms. Katherine Connolly, Senior Managing Associate, Sidley Austin LLP
  • Amb. Alejandro Jara, Former WTO DDG, Former Ambassador of Chile to the WTO
  • Mr. Andrés Rebolledo, former Chilean Energy Minister