MATS · Making Agricultural Trade Sustainable

MATS aims to identify key leverage points for changes in agricultural trade policy that foster the positive and reduce the negative impacts of trade on environmental sustainability and human well-being. Focus is on improving the design, governance and implementation of trade regimes and policies at private sector, national, EU, African and global levels. The key operational features of MATS are: a) a set of 15 in-depth country, regional and product case studies to provide a deeper understanding of the conditions for sustainable trade, an integrated multi-model simulation and assessment of linkages with agricultural market, trade and investment dynamics, and an analy-sis of institutional, regulatory and legal frameworks; b) a multi-stakeholder backcasting approach that builds on recent research related to transformative change and social innovation, and that uses novel participatory methods and platforms to explore transition pathways towards sustainable trade; c) a clustering with other trade-related research projects to benefit from synergies, and a major role for sector representatives, social movements and policymakers in framing analyses, co-assessing linkages, and deriving policy recommendations. MATS has the ambition to set a new benchmark in trade policy analysis. The main project outputs will be: (1) New quantitative and qualitative insights on the interactions between agricultural markets, trade, investments, policy, environmental sustainability and human well-being. (2) A set of Discussion Papers and Policy Briefs, incl. recommendations for enhancing the coherence of agricultural and trade policies with the SDGs. (3) An enhanced civil society–stakeholder–policy dialogue that is supported by an evidence-based communication platform – the Sustainable Trade Hub. (4) A set of innovative research tools for the analysis of the interactions between agricultural trade, agricultural investments, policy, environmental sustainability and human well-being.