Global trade governance is currently facing significant challenges, but the rapidly shifting global trade landscape also presents new opportunities to fundamentally redesign and reinvigorate multilateral trade cooperation, advancing efforts to deliver a fairer, low-carbon future and more sustainable future. This panel will explore how the global trade system can be a driver of both environmental and social sustainability and identify the urgent governance reforms needed to realise this vision.

The session will highlight the systemic barriers faced by Global South countries in accessing climate finance, green technologies and fair market access, and will explore their critical role in leading global efforts to build a fairer, more inclusive trade system capable of underpinning a new era of low-carbon development.

Drawing on research, policy analysis and lived experiences from Africa and the wider Global South, the session will identify practical pathways for aligning trade, climate, biodiversity and sustainable development objectives. It will analyse how current failures in trade governance

undermine social and environmental sustainability and have fuelled growing backlash against global trade cooperation in both the Global South and Global North. Examples include concerns over restricted policy space under existing trade rules and the rise of unilateral climate-related trade measures.

This session will also examine how different negotiations and discussions within the WTO – including ongoing work under the Committee on Trade and Environment, Technical Barriers to Trade, and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures – can be leveraged to promote a just, inclusive and development-oriented low-carbon transition. Further, it will explore the interactions between WTO processes and other international forums, such as the UNFCCC, BRICS, G20 and regional bodies.