| This thesis focuses on the conflict and coherence of trade and environment in modern world, makes a brief analysis and provides tentative recommendations.The relationship between trade and environment has both theoretical depth and practical significance. In the first part of this thesis, a short historical review of the discussion on environment and trade is made. As this part explores, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in 1947 and the World Trade Organization (WTO) which set up in 1995 as the successor of the GATT have made effective efforts for the liberalization of world economy. However, international trade regimes including the GATT/WTO mechanism show inadequate emphasis on environmental effects in a very long period. Along with the burst of environmental crises and the emergence of trade measures based on environmental reasons, international trade regimes began to take account of environment issues. Now, some scholars advocate that a new and independent World Environmental Organization (WHO) should be established to deal with environmental policies and disputes; this thesis holds the view that it's better to solve these problems by the established WTO system to save the cost.On many aspects in the issue of trade and environment, developed (northern) countries have different view with the developing (southern) countries. The second part of this thesis introduces such difference: the developed countries propose that more environmental issues should be considered in the new round of the WTO, so that the combination of trade and environment can be realized; while the developing countries are reluctant to discuss this in the framework of WTO for fear that such negotiation would be similar to the issue of intellectual property in Uruguay Round which is harmful to developing countries.The third part of this thesis discusses the relationship between WTO and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). It is pointed out that conflicts and contradictions exist in many aspects between the WTO and the MEAs, this forms the main reason that the problem of trade and environment is hard to solve. Among the environmental conventions in the world, some have direct effects on international trade. Because the MEAs have different premise compared with the WTO, and thebondage also differs, the MEAs and the WTO shows complicated connections. The WTO has a standpoint that the WTO rules respect the requirements of MEAs, but environmental issues involved in specific agreements and the jurisprudence established in the process of dispute settlement of the WTO still give assessment on the statue of environmental issues in international trade. It can be generally regards that the WTO supports environmental-related trade measures on condition that such measures conforms the principle of multilateral trade, namely non-discrimination, transparent and so on. But in fact, particular practices demonstrates that the WTO has not found a clear stand on environmental issues, and because of this more efforts should be made in this field in the new round of multilateral trade negotiation.From what has been shown in the proceeding parts, the main problem is how to settle the position of environment in trade mechanism. The fourth part of the thesis gives recommendations as follows: (i) Since the principle of precaution is already recognized as the basic principle of international environment law, it is considerable that the WTO rules give detailed regulations, (ii) During the amendments of SPS Agreement, the boundary of risk assessment system should be more clear and practical, (iii) Just as stipulated in many environmental agreements, the WTO should implement the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, seeking real equity beyond the equality of legal status, (iv) To solve the contradictions of WTO rules and MEAs requirements, amendments should be made to article XX of the GATT. (v) In the classification of "like product", it is necessary to reasonably definite and apply rules of PPMs, so to avoid only c... |
