World Trade Organization - Harvard Model United Nations

World Trade Organization
trade promotes more long-distance transport, which is
a major contributor to pollution and natural resource
consumption; trade rules impede national governments’
own environmental policies; the production of highly
traded goods like cotton and cigarettes are more harmful
to the environmental than the production of goods for
domestic consumption which it replaces. 41
The World Trade Organization’s challenge is
to reconcile trade liberalization and environment
protection. Since the WTO is, at the core, a trade-related
organization, it must approach this reconciliation from
the trade perspective. Trade rules are the most powerful
tools that the WTO has. The WTO must reform current
trade rules so that they can incorporate or consider
MEAs and ensure that environmental considerations will
become an essential part of all trade negotiations. The
new set of international trade rules should reflect the
mutual supportiveness that nations have been calling for
during the past two decades.
History of the Problem
Environmental considerations were not the primary
concerns when the international trade system was
reformed after WWII. In the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) signed in 1947, the only
mention of the environment was in the exception clause
of Article XX, which allowed exceptions to normal trading
rules if necessary to “protect human, animal or plant life
or health, or to conserve exhaustible natural resources,
provided that such measures do not discriminate between
sources of imports or constitute a disguised restriction
on international trade.” For the first decades of the
GATT, no references were made to the environment in
any dispute settlements, negotiations, and proceedings.
The reason for the lack of presence in trade negotiations
during the GATT’s formative decades is that trade was
not perceived to be an environmental issue. There was
not enough economic evidence that suggested that trade
had a direct impact on the environment. 42
After decades of silence, environmental issues
regarding trade finally came up on the GATT agenda
in the 1980s. Developing countries were concerned
about the trading of goods that had begun to be banned
in wealthier, exporting countries. Meanwhile, other
discussions regarding trade’s impact on the environment
were appearing in various conventions throughout the
world. Some conventions were successful in ratifying the
first international agreements limiting the impact of trade
on the environment. These include the Basel Convention
on the Control of Transboundary Movements of
Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and the Convention
on Prior Informed Consent for Hazardous Chemicals
and Pesticides in International Trade. 43
Environmental issues regarding trade exploded in the
1990s. They began with a series of heated environmentalrelated
trade disputes in the early 1990s, most notably the
tuna-dolphin dispute between Mexico and the United
States. The US imposed an import ban on tuna harvested
in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean because the process
of catching the tunas in that area involved the killing
of numerous dolphins. When Mexico complained to
the governing body of the GATT, an adjudication panel
convened. Shockingly, the panel ruled in favor of Mexico,
stating that the US violated core GATT principles
including a provision that prohibited discrimination of
imported produces on the basis of process and production
methods. The environmental community viewed this
ruling as a threat to the environmental movement and
the legal status of trade-related provisions in multilateral
environment agreements (MEAs). On the other hand,
the trade community welcomed this ruling since it
feared that allowing trade barriers for extra-territorial
environmental objects would open the door to further
trade-restricting measures that would hide under the
mask of environmental protection. 44
There was much anti-trade sentiment after the
GATT ruling on the tuna-dolphin dispute. In order to
restore public trust in the international trading system,
the European Free Trade Association requested the
reconvention of the dormant Group on Environmental
Measures and International Trade (EMIT). After two
years of research and work, the Group reported to
the 49 th Session of the Contracting Parties in January
1994. The report supported a trading system that could
reconcile the conflicts between environmental protection
and trade and formed the basis for the Decisions on
Trade and Environment, a ministerial declaration at the
Uruguay Round Marrakesh Ministerial meeting in April
1994. The Decision called for the creation of a Committee
on Trade and the Environment, which would work to
reconcile environment-related trade disputes. 45
The creation of the WTO in 1995 from the
Marrakesh Agreement ensured that environmental issues
would be considered alongside trade policies in the
international multilateral trading system. The objectives
of the WTO now include embracing the principle of
sustainable development, which, as defined by the World
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Specialized General Assembly Agencies