Environment and international trade

Résumé du document

The warming of the planet and global climatic change has been the centre of heated debate for the last few years. The environmental problems, by the force of nature, somehow set themselves to the political agenda of the planet. In this paper I'd like to see if the concepts of trade and environment protection often cited as opposite are really antagonist, or if in the contrary, there could be a harmonious development of the two concepts. In my second part, I'd like to answer the question whether the WTO, faced to both aspects, chooses to favour trade over environment or if it has a pro environment sensibility. Pollution is commonly seen as the result of market imperfection. Indeed, the market is unable to adjust its prices to take into account two fundamental features of the human social life. The first of those features is the three functions of the environment, that is to say "a consumption good, a supplier of resources and a receptacle of waste" (Butler, 2000, p434) and the second one is the public nature of a good like environment (no one owns for example what we could call fresh air).

Extraits

[...] Both cases are quite similar and are in my opinion accountable for the general atmosphere that was floating in the corridors of the GATT and is now in those of the WTO. In the 1991 ‘tuna/dolphin, a dispute launched by Mexico, a GATT panel ruled that US regulations outlawing imported tuna caught in nets that endangered dolphins violated GATT rules that protected sovereignty' (Bernstein p254). In this case, it seems that the GATT has a clear bias toward trade, as no additional guarantee over the protection of the dolphin, registered as one of the protected species is particularly given. The shrimps/turtle is similar to its predecessor in several respects. [...]

[...] One of its forthcoming hottest issues will be to deal with the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and to see whether the choice of a market for the greenhouse gazes emissions was good or not. Indeed if we take the somewhat similar case of the fishing rights, which have been put on a market: some countries just bought the parts some other countries couldn't exploit due to technical retard. This had had disastrous effects for instance on the fishing industries of Argentina and of several costal African countries. We could fear that some countries just buy others their right to emit, hampering them in their future development. [...]

[...] A few years later, the position of the WTO, expressed in a report to the Cancun WTO Ministerial Meeting, has somehow changed: was generally recognized that improved market access for developing countries' products was key to the goal of achieving sustainable development' (quoted by Bernstein p253). I don't think it is necessary here to recall the reader of the definition of sustainable development, and I additionally think that this WTO report couldn't have been talking only about sustainable development of the Western world but were well and truly mentioning the whole planet. The fact that the WTO claims that trade has been and still is beneficial shouldn't surprise us. However, it is possible to find arguments favouring trade in regard to the environment. [...]

[...] Consequently, those measures are to be applicable in the domains concerning environment and environmental protection. However, the WTO also guarantees some exceptions when the protection of human, animal or plant life is at stake. The Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) hold good in those matters. TBT Agreement permits nations to impose product and production standards that promote environmental, public safety and other objectives [ ] nations are permitted to determine their own levels of protection [ ] as long as those measures do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade' (WTO, quoted by Kelly p133) Two examples of WTO rulings The two cases that are going to interest us are the two of two famous WTO rulings Some scholars (especially Sampson, 2001) lay the emphasis on the unclear and uncertain character of the WTO decisions due to an impressive number of waivers and exceptions. [...]

[...] This clearly states a strong willingness not to let the environmental issues aside and to take care of them in the boundaries of possibilities. This Preamble was further accompanied by a declaration of the ministers present in Marrakech stating that should not be, nor need be, any policy contradiction between upholding and safeguarding an open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system on the one hand, and acting for the protection of the environment, and the promotion of sustainable development on the other.” On the paper, everything seems then to go in the same direction, the one more or less advocated by the supported of the liberal environmentalism evoked earlier, to preserve the global environment along with securing the ongoing and future possibilities of trade. [...]