The WTO and the undermining of global environmental governance

Abstract

Environmentalists have not always been of the same mind regarding the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the aggressive liberalization of trade. While many have warned about accelerating distorted and unsustainable growth pattems, others have seen opportunities to improve the efficiency of global resource use or to ratchet up national environmental standards where they are weak. But in the wake of the battle in Seattle and five years of experience with the WTO, it is increasingly clear that the hyperliberalization of trade is inimical to the quest for global ecological sustainability in several ways. The WTO has proven to be profoundly anti-environmental both procedurally and substantively, handing down environmentally damaging decisions whenever it has had the chance to do so. Fears of a race to a dirty bottom are proving prescient, and optimism that trade rules can be greened from within has waned appreciably. Moreover, the problem is not just the obvious threat to local environmental quality from the forces of globalizing market pressures. We are also seeing the undermining of global-scale efforts at environmental protection, through the destabilization of several important international environmental regimes and the commodification of critical global cycles and ecosystem services. As a result, environmental opposition in the era of confrontation inaugurated in Seattle is likely to be stronger, more unified, and less willing to tinker on the margins.