Study On The Issues Of Trade And Environment Under WTO Regime

The theory foundation of free trade lies on that the liberalization and deregulation of borders can better enable countries to take advantage of their scale-economy and to wield their comparative advantages, centuries of protectionism hindered countries from utilizing these advantages, thereby free trade excludes national intervenes. While the logic behind international environment-protection is that we live in the same global common goods which only owns limited resources, so countries are supposed to corporate in protecting the environment and the national regulations should be strengthened to overcome the market failure. The trade-restricted measures are effective methods in the protection of environment, therefore a conflict between trade and environment arises. As the most important international organization in charge of international trade, WTO causes many controversies in dealing with trade-environment issues in recent years. Its pro-free-trade attitude is criticized by environmentalists, and the voice for reform of current regulations lingers in people’s ears.This article focuses on the conflict between trade and environment under the WTO regime, and refers to some solutions. it consists of the following parts:Chapter one as a discussion backdrop, reviewing the theory cornerstones of free trade and the history of multilateral trade regime, as well as the generation of environment -protection, in addition is the endeavor of the multilateral regime in protecting the environment.Chapter two analyzes related aspects of environment-protection in light of the global governance, including international environmental treaties, the environmental rules in FTAs, environment-protection organizations and standardization organizations, all of which are related to the theme in this article and is helpful in understanding the complexity between trade and environment.Chapter three intensively reviews the related cases had by the DSB in WTO, specifying the concrete performance of the conflict between trade and environment in practice, then it goes further to explore the jurisprudence of WTO, holding that WTO essentially executes a non-discriminatory jurisprudence and thereby place a rigid condition on trade-restricted measures which are for environment-protection.Chapter four comes up with two principles of dealing with the conflict aforementioned, that’s development and coordination. the conflict should be solved in the process of development, taking special consideration of developing countries’ needs for development. meanwhile, trade and environment can be in coordination under the current regime, there is no need to intrude further into trade for the latter.