Environmentally Friendly Trade Policies to Shape Mauritius’s Future

Mauritius and other Small Island Development States (SIDS) depend heavily on international trade. This presents challenges to environmental management. SIDS are vulnerable to all forms of environmental degradation, of which part are related to international trade, the focus of this chapter. While climate change causes of environmental degradation are beyond the control of the government, others, like deforestation, loss of biodiversity, or degradation of their maritime and terrestrial environments including depletion of fish stocks in their extended economic zones are, at least, partly, under their control. The chapter evaluates Mauritius’s performance through comparisons with eight other selected SIDS: Barbados, Cape Verde, Comoros, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, countries with sufficiently ‘similar’ characteristics (size, latitude, importance of tourism), to justify a comparison of performance. Indicators of the health of the environment suggest that Mauritius has failed to protect both its land and its maritime environment. As of 2015, Mauritius had not yet started decarbonizing, but has pursued environmentally friendly trade policies. Taken together, these comparisons show an average performance for Mauritius: rather below average for the protection of the environment, but above average for trade policies that are environmentally friendly since there are no tariffs on goods for the management of the environment or on goods that are environmentally friendly in their life cycle.