Trade Studies, And Environmental Coordination Issues

With the environmental protection having become increasingly important, the issue of trade and environment has become one of focuses in the international economic and political society.The issue of trade and environment is one aspect of the interconnection between environmental protection and economic growth. It includes: 1. The relationship between trade and environment; 2. Should we use trade measures for environmental purpose? 3. How to prevent environmental measures from becoming disguised trade barriers? 4. How to harmonize the relationship between tra~le and environment?Many experts and international organizations have researched into some aspects of the trade and environment issue and reached certain conclusions. As this issue is relatively new, it needs further study before we reach definite conclusions. In recent years, there arise more and more environment-related trade disputes in international society, which not only impede trade development but also do no good to environmental protection. In this sense, to harmonize the relationship between trade and environment has become an urgent task of the international society. Opening to the outside world and environmental protection are two basic national policies of China, but nowadays there are conflicts between them, which will harm the sustainable development of chinese economy. Therefore, harmonizing the relationship between the two basic national policies is an urgent task of chinese government.On the basis of former research, employing the method of theoretical and empirical analysis, the author further analyzes the relationship between trade and environment and discusses the main problems in trade and environment area. The author holds that international cooperation is an effective way to harmonize trade and environment and gives the viewpoints on how to do in the new round of WTO trade negotiation. In the end, the author puts forward the suggestions to chinese government on how to do in the future, hoping it can benefit the sustainable development of chinese economy, which is the main purpose of writing this thesis.The introduction illustrates the origin of the trade and environment issue. Apart from the introduction this thesis comprises four parts which are divided into nine chapters.The first part mainly analyzes trade and environment issue from theoretical perspective. The first chapter is about the relationship between trade and environment and deals with five typical environmental degradation problems, including chemical-intensive agriculture, deforestation, global warming, acid rain and overfishing, and analyzes the effects of trade and trade measures on these environmental degradation problems, and then analyzes the relationship between trade and environment from the overall perspective.The second chapter gives the theoretical analysis of trade and environment issue from economic perspective. The first section analyzes conflicts between trade and environment. The following sections discuss the current focal problems in trade and environment area , which includes: 1. Should we use trade measures for environmental purpose? 2. The problem of environmental standards and competitiveness; 3. The relationship between environmental standards and relocation of polluting industries; 4, The relationship between trade ,economic growth and environmental protection; and also gives evaluations to some viewpoints and puts forward the author's own viewpoints.The second part of this thesis mainly analyzes the principles and methods coping with trade and environment issue by some international and regional organizations. Some international and regional organizations, such as the United Nations, OECD, NAFTA, have done some deep research in this area and take some measures dealing with trade and environment issue, some of which can be used by WTO to deal with this issue. The above are contents of the third chapter. To protect the environment, the international society has signed about 200 Multilateral Environmental Agreements(MEAs), among whi...