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International environmental agreements are crucial to ameliorating the worst effects of environmental degradation and supporting our planet’s biological diversity and human wellbeing. The forums and processes required to achieve these outcomes often have a unique language – combining international policy, law and careful diplomacy. This handbook has been designed to provide negotiators with comprehensive and practical advice on handling the complexities of international environmental governance.

We hope that this book is not just readable, but also useful and use able. This book flows from the realization that the trade and environment policy debate is technically complex, is becoming highly specialized and is full of cumbersome—and not always useful—jargon. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to understand and follow all the various strands of trade and environment debates. This is not only true for new entrants into the policy debates, but also for seasoned practitioners who may have been focusing only on some elements of trade and environment discussions, or on adjacent discussions within either the broader trade policy arena or the broader environmental policy space. This can also impose particular and significant stress on developing country capacities to participate in these discussions. More importantly, there is the danger of the policy focus becoming ever-narrower and, therefore, missing the cross-issue connections that are sometimes central to resolving complex and inter-linked policychallenges