Trade And Environment

These are complicated areas. First, national environmental measures do not just try to protect the environment within the country. They sometimes extend to environmental protection outside the country's borders, the tuna-dolphin dispute being an example. Do such measures violate WTO principles? Second, some multilateral environment agreements permit trade sanctions against countries that are not signatories. Will the WTO allow this? Third, in instances of cross-border environmental impacts, some countries have used unilateral trade restrictions. Will these be allowed? Fourth, environmental degradation can be caused by the product, or by the production process and method. Can a country impose import restrictions for environment-unfriendly products alone, or does the logic also extend to processes and methods?

No one expected the CTE to sort out all these problematic questions by the time of the Singapore meet. Since environmental issues will form a large chunk of the agenda in future rounds of WTO negotiations, converting it into a permanent body makes a lot of sense. There ought not to be much opposition to the idea of a permanent environment body. Both the developed and developing countries agree that the environment is an important concern. But it is also clear that environmental issues involve a polarity of viewpoints between the developed and developing countries. The developed countries would like protection of the environment to be an argument for deviating from WTO principles like national treatment. They would also like eco-dumping to be prohibited. More generally, they would like the environment to be at the core of the WTO's agenda. The developing countries have no quarrel with this proposition. However, their focus is different. They would like to link the environmental cause with greater market access, so that the necessary resources can be generated for investing in greening their economies. There is also the issue of access to environment-friendly technology and this spills over into areas like intellectual property rights and restrictive business practices. A lot of hard bargaining is called for. Although the South as a concept is probably dead, that does not preclude the developing countries from bargaining collectively on issues related to the environment and labour standards.