Exploring Trade & the Environment An Empirical Examination of Trade Openness and National Environmental Performance

In 2011, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy released a first-of-its-kind empirical study on the relationships between trade and the environment. The new report—called “Exploring Trade and the Environment: An Empirical Examination of Trade Openness and National Environmental Performance”—takes a unique data-driven approach grows out of its use of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a country-level global ranking released every two years by researchers at Yale’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University.