The World Trade Organization: Its Implications for Sustainable Development

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-57 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Williams

This article assesses the first decade of the trade-environment debate, and explores the possibilities for reconciliation of competing positions on trade-environment issues. It explores three aspects of the continuing conflict over trade and environment in the World Trade Organization. Rejecting both optimistic and pessimistic accounts of the past and future of the trade-environment debate it argues that important changes have occurred that have transformed the debate. But, despite the normalization of the trade-environment debate around the concept of sustainable development significant points of contention remain among the various participants.


2021 ◽  
pp. 162-164
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger

This chapter briefly discusses the observation that sustainable development is now firmly embedded in the World Trade Organization (WTO) legal regime, as an objective, but the implication for this commitment remains contested as WTO members have differing views on sustainable development. Beyond the recognition of the interpretive value as part of the ‘object and purpose’ of the WTO Agreements, there has been little progress to date at the global level in finding and agreeing on specific mechanisms by which integration of environmental and social development priorities might be secured at the WTO. There is also very little space for actual cooperation on trade-related aspects of environmental or development law and policy, addressing the second tension detailed in Sections 1 and 2, and there is as yet very little progress in enhancing trade in more sustainable goods and services, though Doha negotiations continue. The chapter also discusses how it is not yet clear, in the WTO, what specific provisions and measures could be enacted to use trade to actually support sustainable development, or what additional cooperation might be undertaken by the WTO on trade-related environmental concerns, or on trade-related social issues.


2021 ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger

This chapter argues that, while the World Trade Organization (WTO) may have accepted sustainable development as an objective of its members, it is not clear that the WTO has successfully integrated either environment or social development concerns into trade policy-making, to date. It considers the three opportunities for integration discussed in Chapter 3, and the implications of attempts to respond to them within the WTO, in two phases. First, it considers the WTO Agreements after the conclusion of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and the 1994 Uruguay Round, and how they are interpreted by the WTO Panel and Appellate Body in trade disputes, as well as any progress in WTO negotiations with respect to the tensions identified earlier during that period. Second, it considers developments in the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations that were launched in 2001, directly before the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), and how subsequent WTO disputes have addressed these tensions.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Irish

This article examines the objective of sustainable development, listed in the preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization. It discusses the relationship between rights to special and differential treatment included in various WTO agreements and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that is part of sustainable development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger

This chapter asks how the principle of integration can translate to the international level, and reviews and discusses trade and investment treaties in the context of this principle. It begins by proving that sustainable development is a ‘purpose’ of over thirty treaties, and that they explicitly commit to achieve this purpose in very diverse sectors and ways, using the FAO Seed Treaty as an example to prove this point. It considers the role of the ‘purposive approach’ in treaty interpretation, in light of the interpretive rules of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), and the limitations of this approach, noting alternative views that are equally relevant. The chapter then goes on to discuss how the integration principle might assist in interpreting provisions of trade and investment agreements, as a basis for later examination of progress in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and in bilateral and regional economic negotiations which make an explicit commitment to sustainable development.


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