Improved market access at the expense of the environment? The environmental risks of the NAMA negotiations at the WTO

Abstract

Though most global trade is in ‘non-agricultural goods’, there is little academic research on the impacts of the Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). NAMA is crucial to the current ‘Round’ of negotiations at the WTO and has potentially far reaching consequences. Nonetheless, these negotiations remain little known. This article explains the breadth of sectors that will be impacted by freer trade in non-agricultural goods and gives an overview of some potential environmental consequences of the NAMA talks. It shows a number of pitfalls in the NAMA liberalization logic and the urgent need for further research.