Trade and the Environment
This chapter provides an overview of a broad range of issues that arise at the interface of trade and the environment. After this introduction, Section II considers trade and environment in the context of the WTO, by examining relevant WTO agreements, recent trade disputes with environmental implications, the WTO’s Committee on Trade and Environment (“CTE”), and relevant mandates resulting from the recent WTO Fourth Ministerial in Doha, Qatar. Section III then seeks to place the traditional issues of trade and environment in the broader context of sustainable development, a concept that connotes a development path that optimizes human activities within economic, social and environmental spheres, and that meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This is followed in subsequent sections by a thematic discussion of the main trade and environment issues, organized according to three main categories: 1) issues arising from material linkages between trade and other facets of the world we live in (Section IV); 2) legal and policyrelated issues arising between trade and other fields of law and policy (Section V); and 3) organizational issues arising between the WTO and other institutional arrangements (Section VI). Section VII concludes with some thoughts on the future development of international economic law and policy as it applies to the environment and sustainable development. The scope, diversity and complexity of this field prevent a single chapter from covering the subject in detail; this chapter, consequently, is designed to provide a sketch of some of the main issues of trade and environment and to complement the discussion of related issues as they are addressed in other chapters of this work.
Impediments and Desirability of Complete Ban on International Movement of Toxic Waste
Abstract This essay identifies the obstacles to a complete ban on international movement of hazardous waste and critiques its desirability. The essay argues that the obstacles are difficulties in formulating and implementing multilateral waste management treaties (WMTs), socioeconomic factors and trade liberalisation. Also, it argues that the desirability of a complete ban is a function of national priority and socio-economic differentials that underpin the waste trade. Furthermore, since the Basel Convention as amended is not a ‘Holy Grail’, the responsibility of a complete ban will lie on the shoulders of countries that do want to ‘trade poison for cash’. Such countries will have to strengthen their environmental legislation, forge and sustain stronger joint actions to confront the problem.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo