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SDG 12: Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns

SDG 12 operates in a context shaped by contrasts between thriving consumers and exploited workers, and rampant unsustainable practices. This contribution critically discusses the areas of international law that are relevant for SDG 12, with special attention for the international trade and investment regimes. It argues that the environmental and human rights agreements currently in force are much weaker when compared to the powerful regimes of international economic law, whose main preoccupation is the liberalisation of trade and investment, and not material footprints and the redistributive consequences of sustainable production and consumption. SDG 12’s focus on voluntarism, and omission of key human rights instruments, can hardly affect this imbalance. It rather reproduces the structural conditions that have generated enormous social and environmental damages.