WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Environmental concerns are not at odds with successful international trade policy despite the long-simmering and contentious debate about the appropriateness of combining the two goals, according to a recent think tank study.
The study, "Reconciling Trade and the Environment and the World Trade Organization," published by the Economic Strategy Institute, says that the two seemingly disparate policy areas have long been cross-pollinating in international law and can be combined to yield fruitful results for both environmental protection and profitable trade.
Peter Morici, the study's author and a senior fellow at ESI, examines the issues surrounding efforts by the World Trade Organization to revamp its rules on environmental restrictions to trade. Some believe these actions by the WTO could be the first step to a comprehensive international agreement on trade and the environment.
Morici writes that the continued intersection of these two policy issues is inescapable. The main question, he says, is whether the WTO chooses to take the plunge and develop mutually agreeable -- and likely stronger -- guidelines to oversee the relationship between environmental protection and trade, or to continue the path of haphazard policy change under the status quo.
"It is not a matter of when the WTO takes up the environment, but how," he said.
Though his analysis is focused on the WTO, Morici's study has implications for the overall debate because the WTO, as the foremost international body dealing with such issues, is at the center of the debate.
On the U.S. front, however, the linkage between trade and environmental policy lately has been most visible in efforts by the White House to assert its own trade agenda separate from that of the previous Clinton administration.
The administration of President George W. Bush has so far heavily -- but ineffectively -- lobbied Congress for the ability to sign trade deals that Congress cannot revise, but can only approve or deny -- so called "Fast Track" or "Trade Promotion Authority." Efforts to date by opponents on and off Capitol Hill to link free-trade efforts with international environmental regulations have been effective keeping the issues inseparable in the minds of lawmakers.
At the WTO 2001 ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, the United States representative to the WTO agreed to include a formal discussion on the role of international environmental agreements in international trade regulation as part of a new round of multinational negotiations to be held in 2003.
The move has heightened concerns by advocates on all sides of the issue.
Free trade advocates and many in the U.S. business community fear the loss of cheaper production resources in less developed nations that are not encumbered by Western-style environmental regulations. Some also contend that straying too far beyond its stated trade mission could compromise the WTO's effectiveness, as well as further complicating already highly complex trade laws.
Government officials and business leaders in developing countries fear that the "greening" of international trade policies would decrease some of the competitive advantage they enjoy under their existing weaker environmental regulations. Such a treaty could also potentially lead to a new form of trade protectionism, they believe.
Environmentalists fear that relying on a trade body to enforce international environmental laws could mean a focus on the commercial side of the agenda, to the detriment of the planet's resources.
Despite the long-standing delegation of trade, labor, and environmental policy oversight to individual international regulatory organizations, some contend that the WTO -- with its trade-centered agenda and minimal environmental expertise -- nevertheless is best suited to address the intersection of environmental and trade policy issues.
The ESI report makes the point that the WTO's "participation in environmental issues is already a practical fact and not a theoretical proposition" due to recent trends in international economics and law which build on longstanding policies.
Morici points to the fact that for several decades governments have brought disputes regarding environment-based trade restrictions before the WTO because there is no other international forum that could properly address such issues.
He cited the recent so-called shrimp-turtle decision as a key example. The decision, says Morici, represents a fundamental shift in WTO policy because before this ruling the body had not permitted restrictions based on environmental concerns to promote social policy aims.
In the ruling, the WTO's dispute settlement panel upheld U.S. restrictions on imports of shrimp that are not caught with sea-turtle-safe nets. The turtles are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as CITES, and the use of use of nets which do not allow the turtles easy escape -- which catch a larger number of shrimp because they lack escape holes -- is cause for concern.
Article XX of the 1994 General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade was the basis for the decision. Under the provision, a country may bypass the international economic treaty's requirement that they treat products from all signatory nations equally, if the product restriction is aimed at protecting human, animal or plant life when similar restriction are in place in the restricting country. Since the United States has laws that protect sea turtles, it was permitted to ban the shrimp.
Morici believes that multinational environmental treaties like CITES, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes exemplify the course international trade law has taken in addressing environmental issues. He says these treaties strive to protect mankind from dangerous substances, and species and the earth from negative human influences, in a consistent manner across nations.
Using these treaties as example of the required balance between geopolitical and environmental needs, he said the WTO could promote the development of a binding international agreement detailing acceptable environmental-based restrictions to trade -- something ardently opposed by critics.
Free market proponent Brett D. Schaefer, an international regulatory affairs fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that while trade and environment policy issues are linked, they are connected in different ways than Morici contends.
"In my mind, trade and the environment are linked primarily through the increase of trade which leads to greater economic growth," Schaefer told United Press International. "Only with greater economic growth can a society be able to afford increased environmental protections."
What is ignored by proponents of directly linking the issues through binding international agreements is that environmental protections are a luxury of wealthy nations, he said. As a result, establishing such treaties could potentially undermine the efforts of developing nations to improve their economic standing, as well as their efforts to enact global environmental policies, he said.
Schaefer says that the best way to address the issue is by encouraging free trade as a means to increase economic growth in poorer nations through "good pro-trade" policies, such as tariff-free trade in environmental technologies. Opponents of linking environmental and trade agreements contend that such policies influence the creation of wealth and therefore lead to such environmental protections anyway without restricting vital commerce.
"Studies have shown that people willingly and eagerly adopt environmental protection once they can afford it," he said. "The lack of environmental protection in poorer societies is not part of a race to the bottom but a simple economic fact. When given the choice between feeding their families and the environment, people choose to feed their families."
John Audley, director of the Trade, Environment and Development project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former trade policy coordinator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said that Morici's analysis of the environment and trade policy debate is on the mark.
"I agree with Morici that back as far as 1947 you can find evidence of a relationship between trade and environmental regulations," he told UPI. "It is unfortunate that some segments of the business community argue that either they don't belong together or it has never been there."
He said that the fact that the WTO has decided to formally address the issue shows that the relationship already exists.
Audley said that despite the Bush White House's efforts to keep such issues out of the trade debate in Congress, their policies have so far been balanced by their continued application of some Clinton-era trade efforts in this arena.
For instance, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has continued the Clinton administration's policy of conducting non-binding environmental reviews of trade deals, and has kept environmental issues on the table in the bilateral free trade agreement talks with Chile and Singapore.
When questioned about the lack of enforcement power in these moves, Audley said that the adherence to these policies could prove to be more political than substantive.
"I think the administration is trying to handle a difficult political issue both outside the United States and within," he said. "My sense is that the administration is trying to balance local interests and concerns while remaining relatively silent on the subject of the environmental and trade."
