The International Trade Regime and SDG 2: Reforming Agricultural Markets for Food Security

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), present a timely opportunity to revisit the debate on how agricultural trade governance should operate at the multilateral level. This chapter explores the relationship between food security, the international legal rules governing agricultural markets, and sustainable development. With a focus on food security as a trade concern, this chapter will argue that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has a fundamental role to play in (re)shaping sustainable agricultural governance for food security. Rules governing international agricultural trade will be interrogated using SDG 2 and the concept of sustainable development as a prism to highlight the ideational divide between food security and international trade rules on agriculture. This chapter proposes that these conflicting ideational systems can be reconciled, in part, through the implementation of SDG 17. To conclude, this chapter asserts that a level playing field in international trade must be created through the elimination of distorting trade measures in a manner that recognises the social, environmental and cultural dimensions of food security.