Aaron Cosbey

Aaron Cosbey is a development economist with 30 years of experience in the areas of trade, investment and sustainable development. His work cuts across a number of IISD program areas, with emphasis on climate change and energy, trade and investment law and policy, mining, subsidies and green industrial policy.

Aaron is actively involved with many sustainable development-related networks, including Global Affairs Canada’s Environmental Assessment Advisory Group, the International Advisory Network of the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS), the WEF’s Subsidies and Industrial Policy Working Group, the World Bank’s Technical Working Group on a Net Zero Roadmap for Mining, the Steering Committee for Yale’s Remaking the Global Trading System for a Sustainable Future Project, and the WEF’s Climate Trade Zero Expert Group. He has served on International Trade Canada's Market Access Advisory Group; the Deputy Minister for International Trade’s Academic Advisory Council on Canadian Trade Policy; the Canadian Minister for International Trade’s Environmental Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade, where he chaired the SAGIT’s Working Group on the FTAA; the UN Tripartite Panel of Experts to the Second Preparatory Committee Meeting for Rio +20; and the CEC’s Expert Panel on Environmental Impacts of NAFTA.

Aaron has also served on the T20 Task Force on Climate Change and Environment, the Green Growth Knowledge Network’s Trade and Competitiveness Research Committee, the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy, the Review Board of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (Islamabad), and the Expert Group on Clean Energy and the Multilateral Trading System of ICTSD’s E15 initiative. He has acted as a consultant to a wide variety of governments and institutions on the issues of trade, investment, climate change and sustainable development, including the (former) Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Commonwealth Secretariat, Environment Canada, European University Institute, the Hinrich Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Canada’s National Round Table on Environment and Economy, New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Overseas Development Institute, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Development Programme, UN Environment, UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the World Bank.