International trade, valued at roughly six trillion dollars per year, is a huge potential force for sustainable development. By opening up new markets, exposing domestic firms to international practices and bringing new investment and growth, trade can create the necessary conditions for poverty alleviation on a scale unreachable by dwindling traditional official development assistance.

Potential is only that—potential. Its achievement depends on a number of factors.

It depends on capacity at the national level to implement policies that help growth-producing domestic firms take advantage of opportunities. It also depends on the strength of the existing domestic regimes for environmental management, as trade-induced growth can have serious environmental and associated social impacts that, unmitigated, inevitably affect the poorest, thereby rendering trade unsustainable.

Finally, it depends on the sharing of the benefits of trade, so that income inequalities are in fact lessened by growth. In a world of increasingly globalized economic activity, increasing environmental degradation and widening income inequity, achieving sustainable development will depend critically on understanding how these forces are linked at domestic and international levels.

For information on the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s statement of trade’s connection to sustainable development go to http://www.iisd.org/trade/philosophy/statement.asp