A Study On The Legal Coordination Mechanism Of Environmental And Trade Conflict In Regional Trade Agreements

The negative interaction between the environment and the trade is that the development of the trade accelerates the environment deterioration while the environmental protection measures bring the market access obstacle and the gap of competitiveness. In essence, it reflects the conflict between the goals to protect the environment and to promote the trade liberalization, and the conflict between the trade measures related to the environment protection and the trade principles, and the conflict between the rules. From the legal point of the view, the conflicts are caused by the imbalance between the environmental rights and the development rights.Besides, the incompatibility between the rules of the environment and trade, and the nature of the rules of the international treaties also escalate the conflicts.For coordinating the conflicts between the environment and trade, the multilateral trading system has made some efforts, forming a conflict coordination mechanism which is based on the rules in the international treaties and is complemented by dispute solution. But the weak environmental awareness in the early days and the tendency of trade protectionism in the trade organizations limit the rule-making process, leaving many issues to be resolved, such as the scattered rules, complex relationship between the WTO and the multilateral environment agreements(ME As). These issues are also the ones that the regional trade agreements (RTAs) have to deal with.The RTAs gradually become the new platform for the international negotiation when the WTO came to the standstill. As the largest regional trade agreement in recent years, the TPP which is aimed to be the one with the highest standards, the deepest cooperation, the most comprehensive scope also pay much attention to the environment chapter. It can’t be denied that when facing the issues left by the WTO, the TPP which can be regarded as the typical case of the RTAs indeed has made the breakthrough in many issues related to ’the specific rules’ ’dispute resolution mechanism’ ’international environmental cooperation’, but it still avoids many central issue,such as the ’extraterritorial jurisdiction of the unilateral environment measure’ ’compatibility of RTAs and MEAs’, which means the RTAs still need to make extra efforts to coordinate the conflict between the environment and the trade.