Trade and Environment: A Mutually Supportive Interpretation of WTO Agreements in Light of Multilateral Environmental Agreements

<p>This paper considers how the WTO can make better use of the principle of “mutual supportiveness” as an interpretative tool. It examines the success of the WTO in enhancing the relationship between trade and environment and between the WTO agreements and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs); compares the different interpretative approaches in the United States – Shrimp and EC –Biotech; and argues that a mutually supportive approach that allows consideration of MEAs that are not binding on WTO parties does not change the rights and obligations of WTO members.</p>

Trade and Environment: A Mutually Supportive Interpretation of WTO Agreements in Light of Multilateral Environmental Agreements

<p>This paper considers how the WTO can make better use of the principle of “mutual supportiveness” as an interpretative tool. It examines the success of the WTO in enhancing the relationship between trade and environment and between the WTO agreements and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs); compares the different interpretative approaches in the United States – Shrimp and EC –Biotech; and argues that a mutually supportive approach that allows consideration of MEAs that are not binding on WTO parties does not change the rights and obligations of WTO members.</p>

Part VII Inter-linkages with Other Regimes, Ch.43 Trade

This chapter reviews the interactions between international trade law and environmental protection. It begins by explaining how trade and environmental protection are physically interlinked, before offering an account of the evolution of the trade and environment debate. The chapter then examines the relationship between multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and trade, followed by an analysis of questions that have arisen in assessing the compatibility of environmental measures with trade law. International trade law may have a ‘chilling effect’ on the adoption or effective implementation of international environmental agreements. Conversely, environmental policies employing trade restrictions can become ‘green protectionism’ and even ‘eco-imperialism’. The chapter explores two emerging developments of relevance for the trade and environment debate, including the rise of regional trade agreements and the growing importance of climate change-related disputes. It concludes with a critical assessment of the prospects for strengthening coherence between international environmental and trade law.

Massive Institutional Structures in Global Governance

Global governance consists of elementary regimes that form regime complexes, which in turn give rise to what we call superclusters around broad policy domains. In recent years, scholars have explored what these macroscopic structures look like and how they evolve over time. Yet the complex ways in which entire governance superclusters interact and coevolve, and what might emerge through this process, have not received much attention. In this article, we expand the ontological frontier of global governance research by offering a first bird’s-eye view on supercluster-level institutional interaction with an empirical focus on trade and environment. We constructed and analyzed a dynamic network-of-networks model, revealing a supercluster complex, a massive institutional structure in global governance consisting of two or more interlocking superclusters that exert a measurable influence on each other’s course of development. We theorize that the supercluster complex serves as an institutional fabric that enables the degree of self-organized coordination observed between the trade and environment policy domains. Our preliminary findings warrant more research on supercluster complexes as an important but little-noticed phenomenon in global governance.