A Study On Environmental Provisions In Free Trade Agreements

The sustainable development of trade depends on a virtuous cycle of resources and ecological environment,while trade liberalization can improve the level of environmental protection by promoting transformation and dissemination of technologies beneficial to the environment.As an effective means of environmental protection,trade can realize the objective of the sustainable development of economy and the environment through incorporating environmental protection provisions into a FTA.Currently,environmental provisions are being included into FTAs in increasingly more creative ways.From the perspective of policy and law,this thesis examines trade-environment linkages in the American and EU FTAs by analyzing and comparing the environmental provisions that are contained in FTAs and finding key differences between them,including the different approaches of the United States and the EU to their implementation;and will further put forward proposals for the improvement of environmental provisions in Chinese FTAs based on its domestic conditions.The thesis is consisted of the following four parts:In the first part,the reasons for incorporating environmental provisions into FTAs will be primarily explored.First of all analyzing how trade agreement as an effective method deals with environmental issues according to economic theories;then pointing out the dilemma of coordinating trade and environment under the WTO system;finally,putting forward the point that using FTAs to solve environmental issues is a feasible mode of coordinating conflict of trade and environment,by analyzing the advantages of incorporating environmental provisions into FTAs.In the second part,the incorporating approaches of environmental provisions in current FTAs will be mainly introduced,i.e.preamble containing environmental protection objectives,exceptions for environmental protection,environmental side agreements and separate environmental chapters within the main text of the free trade agreements.And then the legal binding of these approaches will be detailedly discussed on the basis of Abbott's legalization theory,hence,reaching a conclusion that a separate environmental chapter is the best current approach,which is also the approach focused on in this thesis and adopted by the two large economies of EU and the United States.The third part is the central part of this thesis whose primary objective is to identify and compare the environmental provisions contained in American and EU FTAs.Firstly,it provides a general overview of environmental policy and legal system of the two parties' FTAs,then reviewing development processes of environmental provisions in American and EU FTAs,later selecting the representative US-Peru FTA&EU-Peru FTA and KORUS FTA&EU-Korea FTA to conducts a comparative analysis.The former comparison emphasizes innovations of the FTAs in relation to multilateral environmental agreements,focusing on their provisions on biodiversity,covered agreements and forest governance,as well as their dispute settlement provisions.The latter comparison stresses on the general substantive and procedural commitments on the environment under the FTAs.Finally comes to a conclusion of convergence and divergence of environmental provisions in American and EU from the perspectives of application and enforcement of environmental laws,relation to multilateral environmental agreements,public participation mechanisms,institutional arrangements and dispute settlement mechanisms and summarizes the current situation and characteristics of environmental provisions in the current FTAs and its future trends based on above comparative analysis.In the fourth part,this thesis combines the latest development of environmental provisions in Chinese FTAs and beneficial experience of environmental provisions in US&EU FTAs,and puts forward improving suggestions for environmental provisions in Chinese FTAs.Firstly,the development of environmental provisions contained in Chinese FTAs will be introduced and the convergence and divergence of environmental provisions in China-Korea FTA and EU-Korea FTA/KORUS FTA will be further compared.Then based on the above comparative analysis,my thesis will raise improving suggestions for environmental provisions in Chinese FTAs,including the insisting principles that environmental provisions setting-up and specific provisions contents improvement.Overall,in part due to the stalled Doha round of WTO negotiations,however,FTA has quietly emerged as a potentially more important site to discuss trade-environment politics,and as the pioneers of incorporating environmental provisions into FTAs,the world's two large economies,the US and EU are aggressively pursuing environmental goals by FTAs.This thesis tries to explore how these FTAs create trade-environment linkages among different legal orders to realize the co-regulation of the global environmental issues through the text analysis of the environmental provisions contained in American and EU FTAs.