Project: Protecting Biodiversity through Regulating Trade and Business Relations

Acronym	BIO-TRADE (Reference Number: BiodivRestore-482)
Duration	01/04/2022 - 28/02/2025
Project Topic	The scientific objective of the project is to produce novel understanding of current and future European rules that impact on or target to protect and enhance biodiversity outside Europe. The presumption is that by regulating European business relations, European law can extend its positive biodiversity impacts elsewhere in the world, possibly having a major role in reaching the goals of international environmental and human rights agreements. The BIO-TRADE project assists European regulators and other actors in Europe in developing tools and mechanisms for upscaling the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity outside their territories in an effective way. Both public law and regulation and private instruments (e.g. certification schemes), are examined, and synergies between biodiversity and human rights protection are analysed. Our main research question is: How can the EU and European countries regulate their impacts on biodiversity abroad in order to contribute to positive socio-ecological outcomes through effective, fair and coherent law and policy? The role of law and regulation on facilitating or frustrating the transformations for safeguarding biodiversity is not well understood. The proposed BIO-TRADE project is novel as it brings together researchers with expertise in law, policy and trade and its nexus with biodiversity, to uncover the root causes of biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems and to reveal legal innovations that can be used towards conserving, restoring and sustainably using biodiversity. Strategies for regulating trade and international business rely on differentiating between sustainable and unsustainable practices. Transparent and fair criteria for sustainable production should form the basis for regulating businesses. Therefore, sustainability criteria must acknowledge the strong dependence of human wellbeing on natural resources and ecosystems. BIO-TRADE analyses how scientific knowledge, other knowledge systems, and multiple dimensions of values of biodiversity need to be brought into the shaping of law and the definition of standards and criteria for lawful vs. unlawful activities and products. Taking an ecosystem-based approach will serve to examine the way socio-ecological systems are interconnected: forests, wetlands, farmlands, and aquatic socio-ecological systems cannot be effectively protected or restored separately. In BIO-TRADE, the ecosystem approach will be weaved with legal innovations. Legal rights are interconnected: environmental basic rights cannot be separated from land rights, water rights, right to food, and workers’ rights. The project examines European lessons learned and good practices in protecting biodiversity and the right to a healthy environment outside Europe. These practices shall serve as a catalyst for action to address the global biodiversity crisis.
Network	BiodivRestore
Call	BiodivRestore Transnational Cofund Call 2020-2021

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Finnish Environment Institute	Coordinator	Finland
2	Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Partner	Sweden
3	University of Copenhagen	Partner	Denmark
4	University of Bern	Partner	Switzerland