Study Of The Impact Of Environmental Measures On International Trade And Counter-Measures

Issues of trade and environment have been discussed extensively in the GATT and in the WTO since 1970s. Environmental measures, also called green trade barriers, are all trade-related environmental measures adopted by a country or a regional organization to protect environment, as well as health and safety of wildlife, animals, plants and humans. As environmental measures are becoming more frequent, stringent and complex, its impacts on international trade are more obvious and serious. The emergency of environmental measures has profound social and theoretical backgrounds. Most current studies in this aspect deal with the specific cases and their research strategies are qualitative. This thesis will summarize the former case studies and explore their effects on the international trade with the quantitative research strategy based on the Lionel Fontagné's study. Take three more-affected industries of China as typical examples we can see the impacts of environmental measures on China's foreign trade. Since most environmental measures are against sectors with competitive advantage in developing countries, in the short term such measures will have adverse effects on trade, especially market access of developing countries. Thus we need to adopt some countermeasures on both international level and national level.