I am honored and delighted to be here today. This is the first time that I have spoken at the ASIL Annual Meeting, which fulfills an old professional dream of mine. And this is the ASIL Centennial, which is so nice. I would like to thank the organizers, in particular Professor Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, for having invited me. I have to begin by stating that the views that I may express during this conference are strictly personal and do not bind the WTO members or the WTO Secretariat. I agree with my colleague Franz that trade and environment can be mutually supportive-this is reflected in the WTO, and in several other international instruments and forums. In fact, actions of states should be mutually supportive of our sustainable development. Indeed sustainable development is a WTO objective mentioned in the Preamble. Trade, investment, and the environment are not closed boxes--they cannot be, since they need each other to expand in a sustainable manner. But I have only ten minutes, so let's focus on the legal situation of the WTO in this respect, both internally and externally. THE WTO INTERNALLY: A SINGLE UNDERTAKING There are no closed boxes within the WTO, which is a The Single Undertaking refers to two different concepts: the political undertaking, refers to the method of negotiations (nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, which is not inconsistent with the possibility of early implementation (early harvest)), and the legal undertaking which refers to the notion that the results of the negotiations form a package to be implemented as one single treaty. I am referring here to the principle that the WTO is legally a Single Undertaking. Early on, the WTO jurisprudence confirmed that all WTO obligations are generally cumulative and Members must comply with of them simultaneously. Therefore, in light of the interpretive principle of effectiveness, it is the duff of any treaty interpreter to 'read applicable provisions of a treaty in a way that gives meaning to of them, harmoniously.' An important corollary of this principle is that a treaty should be interpreted as a whole, and, in particular, its sections and parts should be read as a whole. This principle has had tremendous impact on the interpretation and application of several WTO provisions. The two recent disputes between strong developing countries and the European Union and the United States (the U.S.--Cotton dispute and the EC--Sugar dispute (1)) have confirmed that WTO members must comply with their WTO obligations cumulatively and simultaneously, and that, for instance, compliance with the Agriculture Agreement does not imply necessarily an exemption from compliance with other obligations and prohibitions of the WTO. Theretore, within the WTO provisions must be interpreted and applied together and harmoniously. There are no closed boxes within the WTO! The WTO treaty has trade, environment, and investment components. The WTO includes several trade norms; even if there are no formal investment chapter in the WTO, the GATS and its mode 3 already captures some types of investments; and the WTO also recognizes that states may have environmental concerns that may allow them to set aside WTO obligations. Therefore within the WTO Single Undertaking, members must find ways to reconcile their trade, investment, and environmental rights and obligations. THE WTO EXTERNALLY: THE BROAD TRADE AND ... DEBATE On the trade and environment debate: Environment is an explicit non-trade concern that is referred to in several places in the WTO. More generally, WTO jurisprudence has now clearly established that members can give priority to policies other than trade; environment can be one of those non-trade policies. Through a new interpretation of exception provisions, our appellate body has managed to operationalize these exception provisions so as to provide members with policy space to administer non-WTO concerns, as long as the invocation of non-WTO concerns are not disguised protectionism. …