Building the Evidence Base on Trade Agreements and Environmental Outcomes

The overarching objective of this assignment is to build the evidence base on the role of trade levers in delivering positive environmental outcomes. There are two key elements to this work, contributing to the delivery of this high-level objective:

The first workstream will assess the impact and effectiveness of existing commodity certification schemes as a means to ensure positive environmental outcomes. It will identify how the environmental impacts of key commodities driving deforestation differ between goods produced to internationally recognised sustainability standards and those which are not, and rank the effectiveness of schemes against benchmarking criteria for certified goods, e.g. for sustainable palm oil the criteria defined by the UK Roundtable on Sourcing Sustainable Palm Oil.

The second workstream will assess the environmental impact of high and low ambition options for environment and forestry related text in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It will provide an assessment of the importance of including strong environmental considerations in FTAs and what this achieves.

Additional information: This contract is awarded through the Expert Advisory Call Down Services framework (EACDS) which is owned by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Lot B - Strengthening Resilience and Response to Crisis is a technical advisory call-down service that provides rapid response, expert support to FCDO and other UK Government Agencies, and other donors.