Environmental Border Tax Adjustments and International Trade Law


Book Description

This timely book brings clarity to the debate on the new legal phenomenon of environmental border tax adjustments. It will help form a better understanding of the role and limits these taxes have on environmental policies in combating global environmental challenges, such as climate change.




Global Environmental Protection through Trade


Book Description

Despite an increasing global awareness of environmental concerns, setting internationally binding and ambitious commitments has proven exceedingly complex. As states are seeking alternative methods to support global environmental protection, this book takes a closer look at the possibility of using national trade measures that make market access conditional on the environmental impact of the production process abroad.




Trade and Environmental Law


Book Description

This extensive volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law probes the essential concepts, contemporary research, and key elements of law at the intersection of international trade and international environmental law. Its succinct, structured entries provide a definitive and comprehensive assessment of the interactions between these fields, written by internationally renowned and recognized experts.




Environmental Sovereignty and the WTO: Trade Sanctions and International Law


Book Description

The growing body of WTO jurisprudence is of profound significance for the development of the general body of international law. With this in mind, Environmental Sovereignty and the WTO succinctly examines how the WTO law can contribute to achieving coherence between general international law, international environmental law and international trade law and avoid conflicts between trade liberalization and global environmental protection. Professor Condon argues that these three branches of law are generally consistent with each other in the area of international law where they intersect. However, WTO jurisprudence can benefit from a more explicit analysis, provided here, of the way that panel decisions fit into the general framework of international law. No law reforms are currently needed to facilitate this task. As the text shows, it is a matter of using the current WTO rules to resolve conflicts between treaties such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and to determine the circumstances in which unilateral trade measures should be permitted. The topics addressed in Environmental Sovereignty and the WTO will be of considerable interest to a broad audience given the global political controversy over American unilateralism, the fairness of WTO rules to poor countries, and the effect of trade rules on efforts to protect the global environment. However, the book addresses these controversial issues without sacrificing academic rigour and will appeal to a scholarly and professional audience seeking new approaches to addressing the problems raised by the globalization of law. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.




Environment and Trade


Book Description

Reference tool to facilitate broader understanding and awareness of relationship between environment and trade which can then become the basis on which fair and environmentally sustainable policies and trade flows are built.




Trade and the Environment


Book Description

The relevance of the WTO legal system for environmental protection is a central topic in general international law, WTO law and international environmental law. The relationship between WTO law and international and domestic efforts to protect the environment has moved to centre stage in WTO and international environmental law. It has also spurred the discussion on fragmentation in international law in recent years. This book analyzes these issues by examining the 'horizontal' interaction between WTO law and 'other' international law, the 'vertical' relationship between WTO law and domestic law, and the contents and the interrelations between fundamental provisions of WTO law. This study relies on established insights from legal theory in order to achieve greater clarity in legal argumentation. The main results of this analysis are applied to two topical instances of international regime interplay, namely the relevance of WTO law for international and domestic measures protecting the earth's climate and the ozone layer. A series of controversial topics in WTO and general international law are addressed in this book, including the notion of conflicts of norms, and the resolution of conflicts of norms; the role of international law in WTO proceedings; extraterritorial jurisdiction and unilateral trade measures; proportionality and balancing of interests in international and WTO law; the core disciplines of the GATT and the TBT Agreement; process and production-based measures (PPMs) in WTO law; climate protection, protection of the ozone layer, and WTO disciplines.




Sustainable Development in World Trade Law


Book Description

In Johannesburg at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, over one hundred and eighty states assumed a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development economic development, social development, an environmental protection at the local, national, regional and global levels. This remarkable collection of papers, sponsored by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), demonstrates that sustainable development serves as a unifying concept with the potential to facilitate much-needed respect for international law and timely implementation of diverse and overlapping international commitments. It builds on the substance of a rich and complex debate at the intersections among economic, social, and environmental law, bringing together a broad cross-section of viewpoints and voices. The authors review recent developments in WTO discussions and negotiations, and in the recent decisions of the WTO Appellate Body, from a sustainable development law perspective. They also survey relevant new developments in trade and economic agreements at regional, inter-regional and bi-lateral levels. The various essays focus on sustainable development aspects of key issues in recent trade negotiations such as the Singapore Issues (investment, competition, trade facilitation, and government procurement), intellectual property rights, investment arbitration and the linkage between the WTO and multilateral environmental accords, (MEAand¿s).. Among the specific topics covered are the following: Emerging areas of law and policy in trade and sustainable development, The underlying development agendas in global trade law negotiations, Cooperation and potential negotiation on international competition law, Sustainable development aspects of intellectual property rights negotiations, Overlaps between multilateral environmental accords (MEAand¿s) and the WTO, Recent developments in WTO dispute settlement procedures and proceedings, Human rights and environmental opportunities from trade liberalisation and increased market acces, Human rights and environment impact assessment techniques used to analyse trade agreements, Recent developments in bi-lateral and regional trade agreements. Trade, investment, and competition law practitioners and negotiators in developed and developing countries will find this book of great value, as will development and environment law professionals with responsibility for trade and WTO law related matters. With rich contributions from leading trade law practitioners, academics, and WTO panel and appellate body roster members, Sustainable Developments in World Trade Law offers a constructive, timely and accessible expert analysis of recent discussions and advances in the field, providing an integrated and essential guide to some of the most important issues in international economic law today.




Balancing Human Rights, Environmental Protection and International Trade


Book Description

This book explores the means by which economic liberalisation can be reconciled with human rights and environmental protection in the regulation of international trade. It is primarily concerned with identifying the lessons the international community can learn, specifically in the context of the WTO, from decades of European Community and Union experience in facing this question. The book demonstrates first that it is possible to reconcile the pursuit of economic and non-economic interests, that the EU has found a mechanism by which to do so, and that the application of the principle of proportionality is fundamental to the realisation of this. It is argued that the EU approach can be characterised as a practical application of the principle of sustainable development. Secondly, from the analysis of the EU experience, this book identifies fundamental conditions crucial to achieving this 'reconciliation'. Thirdly, the book explores the implications of lessons from the EU experience for the international community. In so doing it assesses both the potential and limits of the existing international regulatory framework for such reconciliation. The book develops a deeper understanding of the inter-relationship between the legal regulation of economic and non-economic development, adding clarity to the debate in a controversial area. It argues that a more holistic approach to the consideration of 'development', encompassing economic and non-economic concerns - 'sustainable' development - is not only desirable in principle but realisable in practice.




Environment and Trade


Book Description

International trade rules have significant impacts on environmental law and policy, at the domestic, regional and global levels. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), dispute settlement tribunals are increasingly called to decide on environment- and health-related questions. Can governments treat products differently based on environmental considerations? Can they block the import of highly carcinogenic asbestos-containing products or genetically modified crops? Does the WTO allow governments to protect dolphins or endangered sea turtles through the use of import restrictions on certain products? How can civil society participate in WTO dispute settlement? This Guide, authored by five world leaders on international environmental and trade law at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), is an accessible, comprehensive, one-of-a-kind compendium of environment and trade jurisprudence under the WTO. Providing an overview for both experts and non-experts of the major themes relevant to environment and trade, it also analyses how WTO tribunals have approached these themes in concrete disputes and provides selected excerpts of the most significant cases.




International Trade Regulation and the Mitigation of Climate Change


Book Description

What can trade regulation contribute towards ameliorating the GHG emissions and reducing their concentrations in the atmosphere? This collection of essays analyses options for climate-change mitigation through the lens of the trade lawyer. By examining international law, and in particular the relevant WTO agreements, the authors address the areas of potential conflict between international trade law and international law on climate mitigation and, where possible, suggest ways to strengthen mutual supportiveness between the two regimes. They do so taking into account the drivers of human-induced climate change in energy markets and of consumption.