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Author	Dr Tine Deschuytere
Organisation/Institution	National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law
Country	SINGAPORE
Panel	International Regulation of Trade
Title	Greening trade in services? Environmental services in Asia’s regional trade architecture
Abstract	Sustainability has become an increasingly prominent feature of international trade policy. Yet, most attention has centred on conditionality mechanisms – such as human rights clauses, preference schemes or Trade and Sustainable Development chapters – rather than on how sustainability objectives might shape the substance of liberalisation itself. This is particularly apparent in trade in services. Trade in environmental services illustrates both the potential and limits of this neglected dimension. Advocates of liberalisation, largely from developed economies, present these services as a vehicle for aligning trade with environmental protection, public health and development. Greater liberalisation is expected not only to generate conventional market-access gains, but also to support the diffusion of environmental technologies and skills essential for pollution abatement and longer-term transitions towards lower-carbon economies. Despite these projected benefits, progress has been modest. Multilateral negotiations have stalled over disagreements about how to define ‘environmental services’ and concerns that liberalisation could restrict governments’ regulatory space in sectors widely regarded as public services. Against this background, binding rules on environmental services now increasingly arise through preferential and regional trade agreements. Nevertheless, these commitments remain insufficiently analysed, even though they determine how far liberalisation in this sector can meaningfully advance sustainability goals. Asia is a key context for this question. Its rapidly expanding network of services agreements – spanning economies with markedly different profiles – and rising share in global trade, gives the region’s regulatory choices increasing systemic weight. This paper accordingly examines how environmental services are regulated within Asia’s current trade architecture. By mapping the commitments contained in key regional agreements such as ASEAN and RCEP, it evaluates whether Asia’s emerging framework provides the basis for a more substantive role in steering sustainability-oriented developments in trade in environmental services, or whether existing commitments reveal constraints that limit such a contribution.
Biography	Dr Tine Deschuytere is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on the intersection of sustainable development and the liberalisation and regulation of international trade in services. She holds a Ph.D. in Law (2025) from the European University Institute, where she examined how EU law and values on sustainable development shape the liberalisation of services mobility in international trade agreements, using a mixed-method approach that integrates legal and quantitative analyses. Tine is also a Senior Editor at the European Journal of Legal Studies, where she undertakes peer-review work in international and European economic law. She is a founding member of the International Economic Law and Policy Working Group at the European University Institute and has contributed to research projects on EU external relations and migration policy as a research assistant at the European University Institute. She also holds LL.M. in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute, an LL.M. in European Law from King’s College London, and both a Bachelor and a Master of Laws from Ghent University. During her studies, she also spent a semester at the University of Nottingham as an exchange student.