The Legal Issue Of The Harmony Between WTO And Multinational Environmental Agreement Under The Doha Round

With the increasing of the appeal for the environmental protection globally, the environmental protection together with the free trade shoulder to shoulder becomes the global theme. Meanwhile, the conflicts between the environment and the trade are becoming more and more obvious. The issue of environment and trade has existed for a long time, and the people never stop their steps to probe into the resolving methods. As the biggest global trade organization in compliance with the principle of free trade, the WTO has developed from the stage of negligence of the environment to emphasis of it. At last, the trade and environment topic is adopted by the Doha Agenda. Compared with the development of the trade, the legislation of international protection is in the form of provision of the Multinational Environment Agreement. The specific trade obligations in the Multilateral Agreement have a favorable influence to the environment protection, but results in conflicts with the environment provision of the WTO rules unavoidably. In essence, the conflict between the WTO and MEAs is the essential embodiment of that between the environment and trade. The existing rules of harmonizing the WTO rule and MEAs can't be approved by the international community unanimously, so can't deal well with the conflicts between the environment and trade in the forms of laws. In 2001, The Fourth Ministerial Conference held in Doha Launches a new Round (the Doha Round) of negotiations and pledges to negotiate the trade and environment issue. The negotiations are planned to begin after the agreement of The Fifth Ministerial Conference in 2003. The paragraph of 31(i) in the Doha Declaration provides that all parties agree to negotiate on"the relationship between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations set out in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs)".Therefore, under the condition of the unfinished Doha round, the article tries to begin with the relations between the environment and trade and the issue of that in the GATT/WTO to search the new means to harmonize the conflicts between the WTO rules and MEAs, for the purpose of giving the advices to our nation for reference to envisage its status and function and actively propose the blue prints to drive the negotiations forward.The first chapter mainly demonstrates the issue of the environment and trade in the GATT/WTO. First of all, to analyze the manifestation of conflicts between the environment and trade from their relations, the interrelations of the environment and trade has both the favorable effect and the pessimistic conflicts, however, among which the conflicts is the obvious one. One of the crucial conflicts is that of the WTO rules and MEAs. Through the consideration and illustration of the judicial experience and the shortcomings in dealing with the conflict between the environment and trade under GATT/WTO, this chapter lays the base to further analyze the issue of harmony of the WTO rules and MEAs in next chapter.The second chapter mainly states the new development of harmonizing the WTO rules and MEAs in the Doha Round. In the Doha Round, the parties finally agree to bring the environment and trade topic into agenda after negotiations. In accordance with the authorization of the Doha Declaration, the parties propose some new advices on how to harmonize the conflicts between the WTO rules and the STOs in the MEAs. The advice is breakthrough on the base of the existing theories of settlement, but the conflicts between the WTO and MEAs are still unresolved with incessant disputes.The third chapter demonstrates the researches of the feasible approaches of harmonizing the WTO and MEAs. With The Doha Round unfinished, no new plan has been approved unanimously, therefore, the author proposes to find the feasible approaches to harmonize the WTO rules and MEAs from the angle of the agreement explanation and dispute settlement. The author emphasizes:when the Dispute Settlement Body of WTO deals with the specific cases involved the environmental trade issues, DSB can judicially explain the Article 20(b),(g) of GATT in broad sense to make the STOs of MEAs comply with the WTO exception rules, that's legalization under the WTO. In this way, the conflicts between WTO and MEAs can be resolved. But at the same time in the multinational trade negotiations the concrete and influential MEAs and their STOs must be agreed to some extents, otherwise any MEAs can be applied and be legalized under the WTO, which can't resolve the conflict and may cause extensive green trade barrier to the contrary.The fourth chapter introduces China'standpoints on how to harmonize the conflicts between the WTO rules and MEAs and its following measures under the Doha Round negotiations. In the short term, supporting the STOs of the MEAs legitimating under WTO is harmful to marketing entrance of exportation of our nation; however, in the long term, since environment protection is the trend of global development, actively participation in the rules-making of environment and trade with the limited recognition of the legitimating of the environmental protection measures and taking the steps for improvement is the long-term interests of China.