Identifying environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies at the international level

This report, produced by an international expert group convened by the Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs (TESS), aims to establish a shared understanding of environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies to inform international policy discussions and promote cooperative action.

• The report addresses the challenge of providing healthy and nutritious food for a growing population and a changing middle-class diet within planetary boundaries, noting that government agricultural subsidies significantly influence international production, consumption, and sustainable development across environmental, economic, and social dimensions.
• TESS assembled a diverse group of global experts from academia, think tanks, and intergovernmental organizations to define environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies. This effort is intended to support ongoing international discussions within the WTO, OECD, FAO, UNEP, the World Bank, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
• The report reviews existing knowledge on agricultural subsidies and their environmental impacts, explores policy trade-offs, and proposes pathways for defining harmful subsidies. It suggests that these findings could lead to cooperative actions such as new international disciplines with flexibilities, soft law guidance, voluntary pledges, or improved transparency mechanisms.

APA

Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs (2025). Identifying environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies at the international level. https://tessforum.org/latest/identifying-environmentally-harmful-agricultural-subsidies-at-the-international-level

Chicago

Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs. Identifying environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies at the international level. 2025. https://tessforum.org/latest/identifying-environmentally-harmful-agricultural-subsidies-at-the-international-level.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs |title=Identifying environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies at the international level |date=4 June 2025 |url=https://tessforum.org/latest/identifying-environmentally-harmful-agricultural-subsidies-at-the-international-level |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{forumontradeenvironmentthesdgs2025identifying, author = {{Forum on Trade, Environment, \& the SDGs}}, title = {{Identifying environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies at the international level}}, institution = {Forum on Trade, Environment, \& the SDGs}, year = {2025}, month = jun, url = {https://tessforum.org/latest/identifying-environmentally-harmful-agricultural-subsidies-at-the-international-level}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }