Environment and Trade: The GATT/WTO Regime in the International Legal System

Abstract

Abstract Connections between environmental protection and international trade have been recognized for many decades. In recent years the political rise of environmentalism has focused acute attention on possible conflicts between environment and trade values and rules. National environmental law has become more comprehensive and more central in most polities, and present or proposed measures of environmental protection often touch matters addressed by international trade rules. International environmental law has also developed rapidly, with little systematic consideration of its relation to existing or evolving rules of the international trading system. The ability of institutions engaged with the law and policy of international trade to take account of environmental law and policy has varied sharply. The principal global trade institution of the period since the Second World War has been the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which has evolved considerably through practice and through formal agreements reached in eight negotiating rounds culminating in 1994 in the Uruguay Round agreements folding GATT into the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO). The inability of the GATT/WTO regime to adapt trade rules to take fuller account of emerging environmental concerns has led to present and potential conflicts, not only of policy but also of legal obligation.