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.
Reconciling trade and the environment : lessons from case studies in developing countries
Contents: Foreword 1. Overview and Lessons Learnt 2. Environmental Policy, Market Access and Competitiveness: The Experience of Developing Countries 3. Policy Instruments in Multilateral Environmental Agreements: Experience of Developing Countries 4. Brazil 5. China 6. Colombia 7. Costa Rica 8. India 9. Malaysia 10. The Philippines 11. Poland 12. Thailand 13. Turkey 14. Zimbabwe 15. Conclusions and Guidelines for Further Work Index
The Canadian Generic Medicines Panel
Among the most important criticisms of the World Trade Organization that echoed loudly in the protests in Seattle in November 1999 is that the WTO unduly constrains the regulatory autonomy of Member States, defeating or frustrating democratic choices in important areas of social, economic, environmental and cultural policy. When properly interpreted and applied, many WTO rules do, however, permit a considerable amount of regulatory dwersity, provided the domestic policies in question do not discriminate against foreigners. The area where the WTO does interfere most explicitly in the abhty of governments to strike a balance in their policies between diverse public values is that of intellectual property. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights does prescribe substantive standards of intellectual property protection,' limiting the abhty of democratic polities to strike their own balance between the provision of incentives for innovation on the one hand and consumer welfare on the other; nor are these the only public values at stake, as debates surroundmg biodwersity and intellectual property clearly illustrate. Moreover, on a conventional economic analysis, unlike the removal of tariffs, quotas and other overtly discriminatory trade barriers, raising intellectual property protection may actually reduce total domestic and even global economic welfare. For example, in the case of increased patent protection, the adhtional monopoly rents to producers may generate little addtional (efficient) innovation, whde creating substantial welfare losses to consumers, who are deprived of cheaper imitations of patented products.2 As Maskus suggests: