Trade and the Environment: the Wto’s Effect on the EnvironmentJoin now to read essay Trade and the Environment: the Wto’s Effect on the EnvironmentTrade and the Environment: The WTO’s effect on the environmentfollowing the second World War, a document known as GATT, or General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was established with hopes of increasing trade and helping ease tensions between nations. Through a system of rounds and meetings, tariffs between countries were lowered, increasing trade. The past half century since the creation of GATT has seen an immense increase in worldwide trade. Resulting from one of these “rounds,” where nations meet to discuss trade issues, an organization known as the WTO, or the World Trade Organization, was created after the Uruguay Round of 1986-1994. With the lofty goals of uniting countries for the benefits of economic prosperity, the WTO has
put together a series of documents explaining its positions; a constitution of sorts.One of the major issues that is fought by activists and environmentalists worldwide is the WTO’s effect on the environment. In the past year alone, several massive protests have occurred at the meeting of WTO officials in several different countries. Protests such as the ones seen in Seattle and Prague are examples of the reactions taken by opponents to the WTO. These protesters have a very legitimate point that needs to be heard, and they are backed with substantial evidence supporting their claim of the harmful effects of this organization not only in environmental terms, but in basic human rights issues as well. The World Trade Organization is a harmful force to Earth’s biosphere and has shown increasingly harmful effects on the environment. The WTO as an Organization As mentioned before, the WTO was created on January 1, 1995, as
a result of the Uruguay Round Negotiations. Currently consisting of 140 members worldwide, it is based with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and has a secretary staff of over five hundred. The organization of the WTO consists of a head Ministerial Conference, with branches of a General Council, Trade Review Body, and Dispute Settlement Body. Below these branches lie several councils and committees to deal with many different trade issues. One branch consists of a committee with the name Trade and the Environment, which concerns itself with issues relating to trade and the environment. Overseeing the organization of the WTO is the director-general, currently Michael Moore. The basis for all WTO decisions lies in its multilateral trading system, where a large amount of agreements that are negotiated and signed by members must finally be ratified in each country’s individual Senate. While the individual agreements are signed and ratified by each country’s government, the primary purpose of the
legislation is to assist the country’s producers, exporters, and importers. The overall goal of the WTO is to make trade freer, resulting in, claims the WTO, a promotion of peace worldwide, an increase in income and a stimulation of economic growth. As part of its preamble, the WTO claims an interest in the environment, and thus created the Committee on Trade and the Environment to make decisions when environmental issues are involved. The preamble itself states it will promote trade “while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment.” The organization, in the past few years, however, has encouraged a lower tariff universally, thereby encouraging producers to look towards less developed countries as prime places for cheap labor and low regulations, especially low regulations relating to the environment. These less developed countries, or LDCs, are known universally for having very cheap, productive labor, and are not even close to having the environmental protection efforts seen in the United States and Europe. So these countries are encouraged to make waste of the land and save profits. Yet the WTO maintains that freer trade will benefit all, and their concern for the environment is shown in the existence of a council concerned with only environmental matters. The
Committee on Trade and Environment, or CTE, was created during the foundation of the WTO to deal with a broad-based mandate dealing with the relationships between trade and the environment. There exist many provisions in the WTO to give the CTE the right to change policies when an environmental issue is at question. When an agreement is in dispute, the CTE will interpret the section, usually from the original GATT Articles, and make a ruling. Such a dispute occurred between the WTO and the United States dealing with a US imposed ban on imported shrimp from certain countries where they declared their fishing methods were improper. In this case, the fishers failed to use turtle-excluding devices in their nets, causing the unwanted and inhumane deaths
Although the CTE was not considered a party to any such agreement, it still had sufficient weight against the agreement and the United States had a lot of influence over it. As an example, on December 6, 1975, Japan signed a resolution expressing support for the US, and followed suit on April 24, 1975 with the same resolution which the US had signed on May 25. This meant that the WTO recognized the authority of the CTE to alter the existing requirements for the importation of shrimp, allowing other countries to make more serious claims if one of them threatened with legal action, thus making it likely that the CTE would have to accept such claims. The United States’s objections were eventually dropped. But only when it was convinced that there was a problem with a shrimp-only ban did the United States take a similar action.
However, other countries were, and were still implementing their own restrictions.
However, the CTE was then used as an informal and informal means of establishing a nonbinding binding, international agreement. One reason that it didn’t work, was because it left the possibility of binding binding by the Council but only to countries outside the Organisation. The CTE also has an important effect on the international climate movement. As a result, at COP21 in 2002 and other international conferences, countries and organizations developed the concepts of non-binding and non-binding action, and now they are very much fighting for control of the process. This does not mean they will be able achieve all those things, as much as it does open new avenues for negotiations. The CTE had a way in the world that was different from any one of the other parties. It helped to increase awareness because it was a way for the trade community to communicate its concerns. This made the non-binding process more transparent and more reliable, so that it would not be perceived as only talking about what was known, which would help to establish stronger ties. CTEs became very popular in this space. Although CTE was not the one that had the widest reach in the world, it has played a strong role in establishing strong rules related to fisher protection in developing economies. It was not the first time that the CTE had played a big part in establishing an international deal or even a treaty. In fact, it has been the only party to any agreement to take action on certain fish. But unlike the other parties to the agreement, the United States is not the only one to give these kinds of things to a third party. The agreement was already established to meet a growing demand by several other industrial countries, including those from Europe. Many of this demand was related to fisheries and to pollution. Since its inception, the CTE provided an opportunity for trade with other countries such as Japan on a number of fisheries and with other fisheries at international level.
However, as the CTE was the first internationally formed one-to-one negotiations of fisheries, not only was there a lack of international cooperation, but also the fact that