The Big Chill: The WTO and Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Robyn Eckersley

Global Environmental Politics, 2004, vol. 4, issue 2, pages 24-50

Abstract: The increasing scope and disciplinary force of international trading rules have generated concern in the international environmental community concerning how far different types of trade restrictions in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Environmental Nongovernment Organizations (ENGOs) have argued that the WTO exerts a form of disciplinary neoliberalism that has a 'chilling effect' on both the implementation and negotiation of MEAs. This paper assesses this claim, particularly in the light of the stalled deliberations of the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment and recent WTO jurisprudence, and concludes that the WTO's trade agreements do serve to limit the scope and operation of MEAs, albeit mostly in subtle rather than direct ways. After exploring a range of options for reform it is concluded that the prospects for greening the WTO from both within and without are by no means bright. Copyright (c) 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2004
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/152638004323074183 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:4:y:2004:i:2:p:24-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/glep

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is edited by Peter Dauvergne

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().