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As a partner in the research initiative of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and their effort to conduct a research on Trade and Environment, we started this research project with a very modest objective. It was to study the impact of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) Agreement in the context of trade in agricultural food products across the borders. Since shrimp export is the second largest source of foreign exchange for Bangladesh, we evaluated the Bangladesh shrimp industry in the context of SPS agreement and the HACCP regulation.

The study explored the linkage between international trade and environment regulation and their impact on sustainability of local environment. The rules of governance of the international agreements and the rules of governance at the local level are not same and so the study wanted to explore any possibility of trade-off that might occur due to international obligations. It was hypothesized that under a weak structure of governance at the domestic front, international obligations would prevail over the domestic rules and regulations. As such, it might be possible for a country to ignore its domestic priorities while trying to comply with international rules.