A history of WWF's work on Trade and Investment

Continuing to break new ground on trade and investment

WWF was amongst the first civil society organisations to engage on international trade and investment policy an involvement which dates back to 1990.

Since then many other NGOs have recognised the critical importance of influencing international trade and investment issues in the course of pursuing both environmental and developmental goals. But the way in which WWF is engaging on these issues is evolving in new and exciting ways.

Over the course of the last fifteen years, WWF has been a close witness to the ways in which international economic policy has been shaped to reflect the interests of the economically powerful, rather than from a perspective which seeks to shape such policy for a coherent international response to the challenges of sustainable development.

This was a process which has been exemplified most recently by the disappointments of both recent WTO Ministerial meetings and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (held in Johannesburg in 2002).

But WWF is not alone in experiencing this frustration. A number of progressive governments recognise the fact that the international community is failing to respond to the sustainable development challenges that we face.

WWF is changing the way in which it is engaging in this debate. Rather than the main focus of our work being a reactive engagement with multilateral processes which seem in many respects to be moving in the wrong direction, we are finding new and proactive ways to work with more progressive actors - governments, businesses and civil society - to forge new precedents which can subsequently be used to inform the international debate.

We are working with those who share our frustration, but who can also summon optimism to engage positively with the development of new models for addressing the challenges that we all face.

A timeline of WWF's work on trade and investment