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It should be said that although these four approaches lay emphasis on different fields, the first two approaches are a bit passive and the later two ones are more positive, there are no conflicts among these four approaches. During the course of greening of the WTO law, the WTO can make use of one or more approaches simultaneously. For example, even if ATE has been concluded, it is still necessary to interpret some relevant provisions or terms.
Part IV The Latest Development of the WTO Law in “the Environmental Protection Era”
During the course of reform and development of the WTO law, the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment gradually realized that it can not resolve conflicts between trade and environment if it just patched up the existing rules, so a new approach must be found to green the WTO law. In this context, the WTO attaches high importance to the proposal that a Green Round shall be held. In Oct. 30,1998, Renato Ruggiero, the Secretary-General of the WTO, mentioned in his speech named A Global System for Next Fifty Years marking the fifty anniversary of multilateral trading system that in order to promote liberal trade and environmental protection to forge ahead in concert and to strength close connection between them, the WTO will hold a High-Level Dialogue on Trade and Environment proposed both by President Clinton and Sir Leon Brittan, the European Community Trade Commissioner, and strongly endorsed by him.
In March 1999, the High-Level Dialogue mentioned by Renato Ruggiero --- the WTO Symposium on Trade and Environment held at Geneva There was a fierce debate on if the new trade round of WTO negotiation --- the Green Round shall be launched among participant countries. Owing to quite differences in level of economic development among members and varying degrees in which members pay attention to environmental protection, there is an intensive contradiction between trade needs of developing countries and environmental policies of developed countries and consequently there are opposed attitudes on the initiation of the Green Round between developing countries and developed countries. Major trading powers in the WTO leaded by the US and the EU advocate it positively because: if the WTO members conclude the ATE by multilateral negotiation and require members to apply more strict environmental laws and standards, they will prevent products with low additional value produced under low environmental standards in developing countries from accessing to their domestic markets; meanwhile they can occupy a leading position in enormous international market for environmental protection relying on their advantages and strengths in economy and technology. However, developing countries object generally to a new negotiation on trade and environment because: it is true that environmental protection can provide environmental resources for sustainable development of developing countries, but from a long term, to develop and to implement strict environmental laws and standards will inevitably bring adverse effects on development, for instance, at least it will add costs of production and limit export potential; so many governmental officials and scholars from developing countries worry that once strict environmental laws and standards advocated by developed countries are affirmed by the WTO, they are likely to be amused by major trading powers and cause “green trade barriers”, and as a result products from developing countries are unable to access to their domestic markets.
On the Symposium in Geneva, Ruggiero proposed to establish a World Environment Organization. According to him, it will overload the WTO agenda to bring in environment issues and set standards through the trade organization and its sanctions procedures, and we need a similar multilateral rules-based system for the environment –a World Environment Organization (WEO) – to be the institutional and legal counterpart to the World Trade Organization.But this proposal was strongly objected by developing countries, and they pointed out that the UNEP in a way was a world environment organization and it was not reasonable for developed countries to expect the WTO to arrive at a consensus-based conclusion when a consensus on environmental standards eludes countries even in the environmental forum, and that the WTO should make full use of the existing mechanism and strength cooperation with the UNEP to resolve update contradictions between trade and environment, so it is no necessity to establish a specialized WEO. In views of most developing countries, the WTO should put more energy in establishing a more equitable and more fair multilateral trading regimes in order to promote trade increase and economic development of developing countries. However, the author thinks this proposal has an active significance because the WTO indeed has some faults inherent in dealing with the issue of trade and environment. As to it, Prof. Wang Xi summed it up as following three aspects: there a, re no organs with experiences on this issue and no special agreement on the environment; a few major trading powers have been occupying leading positions in all kinds of negotiations of the WTO, so it is hard for developing countries to believe that an international organization like this would really implement the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” set forth by the UN Conference on Environment and Development; and, the WTO focused on the increase of trade and was lack of requisite jurisdiction, qualification and capability for dealing with environmental issues in a wider context.The WEO, as a qualified international organization in charge of trade and environment, can remedy those defects mentioned above. But objectively speaking, this proposal is too predicting and too ideal, and now has no feasibility; the WEO should be only regarded as a long-term pursuit for coordinating trade and environment and promoting sustainable development. Nowadays, we should take into account the particular situation and equitable needs of developing countries more than before, and pay high attention to roles of the UNEP, UNCTD and UN Commission on Sustainable Development and make full of their functions in this field because these institutions have advantages that the WTO is incomparable with: first, these institutions, esp. the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, are very experienced in dealing with relationship between trade and environment and have professional contingent; second, their actions are more transparent and democratic than those of the WTO; last, their purposes and terms of reference are rather wider than those of the WTO so that they have adequate qualification and capability to discuss the issue of trade and environment.
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