Trade And Environment

Trade and Environment

Trade and the Environment

Nowhere has the divide between advocates and critics of globalization been more striking than in debates over free trade and the environment. And yet the literature on the subject is high on rhetoric and low on results. This book is the first to systematically investigate the subject using both economic theory and empirical analysis. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor establish a powerful theoretical framework for examining the impact of international trade on local pollution levels, and use it to offer a uniquely integrated treatment of the links between economic growth, liberalized trade, and the environment. The results will surprise many. The authors set out the two leading theories linking international trade to environmental outcomes, develop the empirical implications, and examine their validity using data on measured sulfur dioxide concentrations from over 100 cities worldwide during the period from 1971 to 1986. The empirical results are provocative. For an average country in the sample, free trade is good for the environment. There is little evidence that developing countries will specialize in pollution-intensive products with further trade. In fact, the results suggest just the opposite: free trade will shift pollution-intensive goods production from poor countries with lax regulation to rich countries with tight regulation, thereby lowering world pollution. The results also suggest that pollution declines amid economic growth fueled by economy-wide technological progress but rises when growth is fueled by capital accumulation alone. Lucidly argued and authoritatively written, this book will provide students and researchers of international trade and environmental economics a more reliable way of thinking about this contentious issue, and the methodological tools with which to do so.

The WTO and the Environment

This book is a review of the development of the WTO dispute resolution procedure and the power and influence it has gained over the practises of the member countries as well as in other international treaties. The book addresses the development of environmental competency in the WTO and examines the arguments of those who oppose WTO rule making with impacts on the environment. The WTO’s interactions with multilateral environmental agreements are considered and recent WTO cases including the 2011 US/Mexico tuna dispute and the US sea turtles decision are analysed in detail. In examining how an international organisation which was established with a specific purpose in mind has come to interact in fields beyond its original remit, James Watson demonstrates how the dispute resolution system at the WTO has come to work in a judicialised manner, operating with an informal system of precedent. This has led to the contracting parties placing more reliance on the decisions of the dispute panels and appeal body when considering policy options, with WTO rulings increasingly influencing the behaviour of national legislatures in regard to the environment. The book goes on to make concrete recommendations, based on existing practise in the WTO dispute resolution procedure, which could enhance decision making in environmental cases heard by the WTO. The book argues that this could be achieved with straightforward amendments to the WTO, based on existing practices endorsed under the WTO for other policy considerations. The WTO and the Environment will be of particular interest to academics and students of International and Environmental law.