Policy Brief - When Trade Agreements Matter for the Environment in the MENA Region

127 | January 2024 Policy Brief When Trade Agreements Matter for the Environment in the MENA Region Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, Thais Núnez-Rocha, and Chahir Zaki About the authors In a nutshell Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso is a professor at the University of Jaume I • A huge decarbonization effort is required to avoid serious consequences of climate and the University of Gottingen. [...] Thais Núnez-Rocha is an Assistant • The objective of this policy brief is to analyze the extent to which international trade Professor at the University of Orléans, is affected by environmental provisions in trade agreements. [...] Figure 2 shows that the more stringent The link between trade and the environment and the environmental provisions the lower value of trade in fears of environmental relocation of industries due to dirty goods. [...] there is an agreement or not and increasing values These results confirm the role of trade policy in the according to the legal bendiness of the provisions. [...] When distinguishing by groups of countries and the direction of the export flows, the results show that flows of dirty and footloose goods decrease when RTA have EPs that are legally enforceable and are subject to dispute settlement mainly for flows from non-OECD to OECD.