Studies On International Harmonization Of Environmental Standards Under Multilateral Trading System

Environmental standards are created and executed to protect the element. Because of the differences in economy and technology among the standards makers, especially between those developed countries and those developing countries. To harmonize environmental standards is to make up diverges and to improve the protecting level of the whole world. In fact, there are less economic and technologic differences among developing countries and among developed countries, so the environmental standards are easy to be harmonized. But the gap between developed countries and developing countries is huge and environmental standards are hard to be harmonized. Harmonized environmental standards will promote trading, while diverged environmental standards would be used to restrict trade by trade protectionism, especially during the period of financial crisis. Multilateral trading system is established to promote free trading, and the obligation of harmonizing environmental standards is burdened by WTO members. This thesis is to demonstrate that multilateral trading system should be an international platform for environmental standard harmonizing. And to balance free trade and environment protection is realistic needs of this thesis.Besides the conduct, conclusion, acknowledge and bibliography, this thesis is consist of four parts.Part one: summaries about environmental standards. This part contains the definition of environmental standards, the history of environmental standards and the features of environmental standards. Environmental standards can be classified differently. The researches the relationship between environmental standards and free trade and analyzes the affection to free trade by environmental standards. This is in order to present the necessity of harmonizing environmental standards.Part two: basic theories of harmonizing environmental standards internationally. This part is about the aims, theoretical foundation and principles of international harmonization environmental standards. It is to demonstrate the feasibility of international harmonization environmental standards.Part three: international practices about environmental standards harmonizing outside WTO. In this part, author analyzes environmental standards harmonizing practices of EU, NAFTA and OECD. This is in order to find out experiences of environmental standards harmonizing internationally.Part four: path to perfect environmental standards harmonizing internationally under multilateral trading system and advises to China. The Author introduces current conditions of environmental standards international harmonization and points out its limitations. The path of perfecting is designed based on the above analysis. China should face the reality that both its developing level and environment protection level are relatively lower. Consequently, trading conflicts are unavoidable between China and its trading partners. China must join the stream to promote environmental standards harmonizing in multilateral trading system initiatively. Author brings forward some advice from the aspects of nation, industrial associations and enterprises.