| The World trade Organisation is responsible for administering the rules of the international trade system and for resolving trade disputes that may arise between its member countries.
The WTO's mandate and influence is expanding beyond its original purpose as a trade organisation. Due to the relation between trade and environmental protection, WTO activities now have more extensive ramifications. The manner and outcome of WTO trade dispute resolution is important, not only to international trade, but also to sustainable development. | The WTO Committee on Trade and Environment has:
"brought environmental and sustainable development issues into the mainstream of WTO work. The Committee's first Report, which was submitted to the WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore, notes that the WTO is interested in building a constructive relationship between trade and environmental concerns. trade and environment are both important areas of policymaking and they should be mutually supportive in order to promote sustainable development. The multilateral trading system has the capacity to further integrate environmental considerations and enhance its contribution to the promotion of sustainable development without undermining its open, equitable and non-discriminatory character."
| The WTO can look like a court, as it can act and enforce decisions, by putting sanctions on countries who loose. This mechanism seems to be more effective than the UN Convention route, which has no appeal or enforcement procedure.
Under the WTO's Agreement on Technical Barriers to trade, member countries are allowed to adopt measures deemed necessary to protect the environment - provided they do not constitute arbitrary discrimination between countries or they are a disguised restriction on international trade.
Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) address the problems of global warming, ozone depletion, biodiversity protection, species loss and hazardous waste trade. Several of these MEAs authorize the use of trade sanctions, as with international trade in endangered species or hazardous waste. However the trade provisions adopted by several MEAs are against the rules of trade set out in the WTO, particularly as those rules have been interpreted by several trade dispute panels. This reveals several areas of serious conflict. | | The essential elements of the trade agenda can be found in three core GATT articles. It is the original GATT Agreement of 1947 that provides the foundation of the WTO regime.
Article I prohibits GATT members from discriminating among the products of others.
Article III prohibits discrimination between foreign and domestic producers.
Article XI: means that countries cannot seek to restrict imports or exports by establishing quantitative limits (such as quotas, or bans) to the flow of goods across its borders. | | Environment versus Trade Environmental issues seem to loose out to free trade at the WTO.
The WTO Charter recognises the need to protect the global environment and the right of nations to use trade sanctions to enforce international environmental agreements (like MEAs). The WTO does not allow a nation to use trade restrictions to enforce its own environmental laws when they have a selective and discriminatory effects against foreign producers.
| Biodiversity | The US believes the WTO should take precedence over environmental treaties In Feb 1999 the US objected to countries trying to block the import of genetically modified crops, which could be a restraint of trade under the WTO rules. This objection killed the biosafety protocol of the convention on biological diversity which would have allowed countries to exclude GM seed imports if they feared for the purity of domestic crops.
More on possible conflict between WTO agreements and MEAs (UN Conventions) | | Dolphins | The US restricted imports of tuna under its marine mammal protection act in June 1994 because it wanted to protect dolphins killed indiscriminately by tuna fishermen using the presence of dolphins to locate tuna. The US was found to be at fault but the US objected and was not penalized. | | Wood | Wood form sustainable resources and organic produce.
Environmental groups and some forest producers are keen to label their goods as from sustainable forests, a certification scheme run by the World Wild Life Fund for Nature among others. Organic food also has to be certified. Voluntary labeling schemes are outside WTO rules as long as they don't have statutory backing. But in Britain they do, so labeling could be challenged as contrary to free trade. | | Asbestos | France has banned the import of asbestos from Canada on health and environmental grounds. Canada argues that this is a restriction of free trade. In 2001, the WTO Appellate Body ruled in favour of France. Latest at http://www.etuc.org/tutb/uk/asbestos.html | | Shrimp-Turtle | Each year, thousands of sea turtles are killed in shrimp trawl nets. The US passed a law to require nations catching wild shrimp and exporting them to the United States to have specific conservation measures. These required shrimp trawls to be equipped with "turtle-excluder devices" (TEDs).
India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand challenged the US measure at the WTO. The United States argued that their measure was covered by Article XX of the GATT, exempting WTO members from their trade obligations, in order to protect human, animal and plant life.
The WTO dispute settlement panel rejected the US measure. It was not covered by the environmental exceptions in Article XX. The WTO Appellate body confirmed the decision as they considered that it was unfair to Asian traders. | At the WTO Summit in Seattle in December 1999, a state of civil emergency followed turbulent protests against the World trade Organization.
Environmentalists, trade unionists and others fear that the WTO undermines all standards, both labour and environmental. They want the WTO Director-General, Mr. Mike Moore, to produce an agreement which allows for trade restrictions drawn up for environmental reasons and for environmental impacts to be taken into consideration for all WTOs work
WTO
and the Environment
WTO Disputes
Weekly
news coverage on WTO, trade & Sustainable Development from
http://www.ictsd.org/
Environment Guide to the WTO from Canadian Alliance on Trade
& Environment http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/trade-env/env-guide-wto.html
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