Trade integration holds many development opportunities, but its benefit for sustainable development is not automatic. Managing associated risks that come with trade openness is not straightforward. They require at least a conceptual understanding of the linkages between trade and the opportunities and threats it has on sustainable development.

This ESCAP-IDE workshop aims to enhance the general public and policymakers' understanding of the relationship between trade and SDGs. It gives a broad perspective on trade's enabling and disenabling roles in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Ian Coxhead joined IDE as a senior research fellow in 2022. He is an economist specializing in the study of growth, trade and development, with a regional concentration in East and Southeast Asia. His primary research focus is on the implications of globalization and global market shocks on employment, earnings, migration, and educational choices in developing economies. His broader research interests include interactions between trade, development, natural resources and the environment. He has published widely in peer-reviewed economics journals and was editor of the Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Economics (2015) and co-author of The Open Economy and the Environment: Development, Trade and Resources in Asia (2003).

Professor Coxhead received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Australian National University in 1990. Prior to joining IDE, he was a faculty member in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA from 1991-2022 and served as department chair from 2012-2017. At UW-Madison he also served as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Ph.D. in Development Program, and the Wisconsin Energy Institute. He is an Honorary Professor in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Australian National University.