WTO与环境问题
WTO and Environment
谷啸 gu xiao
【全文】
Introduction
The state of environment is increasingly acknowledged as a global concern, and the impact of trade on environment also more and more clearly. This article begins by examining the relationship between trade and environment, and then moves on to consider how the GATT/WTO suppose to make international trade and environmental policies mutually supportive. The article concludes with an analysis of the limitation of the WTO as an international trade organization to reconcile the trade and environment conflict.
I. Trade and Environment Dilemma
Is trade good or bad on environment, the answer is not obvious. People, however, come to the trade-environment debates from many different backgrounds. The various assumptions and worldviews they start with, and their different technical languages, can be important obstacles to meaningful dialogue and solutions. The critiques about the trade liberalization might harm the environment can be summarized in two points as follows:
Does Trade Liberalization Exacerbate Environmental Degradation?
There is a consensus that trade liberalization might harm the environment if the resources are not efficiently allocated and the environment is not optimally managed. For instance, increasing the energy consumption, farming and wastage by lowering prices and increasing demand; increasing the overuse of natural resources. So for some trade perspective, the roots that causes of environmental degradation could often be traced back to various market and policy failures, for example, the government failed using proper environmental polices to internalize the full environmental costs of production, undefined property rights over natural resources, and trade-distorting policy measures including subsidize polluting and resource degrading activities.
However, both theoretical economic models and empirical evidence exist to suggest that trade liberalization might lead to both overall welfare improvements and a deterioration of environmental quality even if the adequate environmental policies have been put in place. Facing the same empirical evidence, people with different background have different perspectives; the free-trade proponents refer to the overall welfare increase in the idealized world where the adequate environmental policies have been put in place, and the demand of environmental protection will increase with income growth; the environmentalist might insist that any other beneficial effect of trade liberalization can not compensate the increasing of environmental degradation.
