| Since 1950s, problems of heavily polluted environment, exhausted resources, diminishing species have become increasingly serious, and more related trade disputes appeared accordingly. With the process of meetings concerning about environment and development holding by UN in 1990s, the relationship between trade and environment received more attention, among which using trade measures for environment protection accounts one focus. On one hand, trade measures used by more countries tends to become unnecessary "green trade barrier", the multilateral trading system are facing new pressure and challenges for balancing free trade principles and sustainable development. On the other hand, trade measures contained in some important Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) have made more conflicts. It is under this background that the essay discusses the coordination of multilateral trade system and environment related trade measures (ERTMs) from the perspective of law system.This thesis consists of four parts as well as introduction and ending, nearly 44,000 words altogether. At first, the essay analyses the background of ERTMs and its reasonability in the field of economy. Then from the perspective of application and coordination of law system, the essay discusses issues of coordination of multilateral trade system and unilateral ERTMs, as well as MEAs. Lastly, being a developing country, related suggestions of meeting the challenges of ERTMs are brought forward both from domestic and international sides.Introduction. In this part, two main aspects of conflicts between ERTMs and multilateral trade system are introduced simply. The author' writing construction is also stated.Part I ?Review of ERTMs. ERTMs appear in the conflicts of trade and environment, where three kinds of contradiction always exit, namely, the difference between trade policy and environment policy, distinction of developed countries and developing countries, incompatibility of free trade and "green" trade protection. Is it reasonable or necessary to apply ERTMs? The economics believe that productions and consumptions with environmental externality count the direct cause, while the system disfunctions are economic root cause for environmental problems and environmental external effect. Therefore, environmental policy is best for it's dealing with the deep roots ofenvironmental deterioration, while trade policy is second for which always lead more cost and welfare economic loss. Although ERTMs do not sound well, they are applied for some reasons, such as the failure of carrying environmental policy, the intention of change another country's environmental policy, or even realizing trade protection objection.Part II - Coordination of Multilateral Trade System and Unilateral ERTMs. Reasons of application of unilateral ERTMs are presented firstly. Since many disputes aroused by unilateral ERTMs have been brought to WTO' Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), Currently, the author regards that the WTO law are the only criterion to decide the matters about ERTMs, and the coordination work should carried out in the framework of WTO. Looking back of the past cases, we notice that "environmental exceptions" of GATT article XX is the key standard to make a judgment. The DSB did great effort to explore the application of this article and tried to explain the terms more reasonable. Surely, it will still be the DSB' heavy task to control and regulate the unilateral ERTMs in the future.Part Coordination of Multilateral Trade System and MEAs. From the perspective of international law, conflicts of multilateral trade system and MEAs focus on the compering jurisdiction and the incompatibility of rules. In this part, suggestions about coordination are reviewed at first. Then the author explores the ways of coordination on the basis of analyzing the respective disputes settlement system of the two treaties, and tries to examine the application of methods about principles of coordination on treaties. It seems that before new agreements be concluded, emphasizing narro... |
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