The WTO and the Environment: Its Past Record is Better than Critics Believe, but the Future Outlook is Bleak

Eric Neumayer

Global Environmental Politics, 2004, vol. 4, issue 3, 1-8

Abstract: This article argues that the WTO's past environmental record is much better than critics would have it. Its jurisprudence has become increasingly environmentally friendly and many charges against the dispute settlement process are based on misunderstandings. WTO rules have, so far at least, not deterred any multilateral environmental agreements. The lack of ambitious environmental protection measures is not the fault of the WTO, but the responsibility of policy-makers from its member states. At the same time, the WTO has done little to actually promote environmental protection and the treatment of the precautionary principle in WTO rules is highly unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change in the future. The reason for this is that there is not enough support among member countries, particularly those from the developing world, to render the multilateral trade regime more environmentally friendly. The challenge is to green WTO rules in a way that is beneficial and therefore acceptable to developing countries. Copyright (c) 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/1526380041748083 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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:4:y:2004:i:3:p:1-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().