Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
question tend not to prefer such side-agreements, but the USA tends to present them with
a take-it-or-leave-it template. Other regional trade agreements, such as the free trade area
negotiated under the auspices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
tend to follow the WTO exceptions model (ASEAN, 1992, Article 9). The agreement
between the USA,
ve Central American countries, and the Dominican Republic (DR-
CAFTA) takes a middle route, borrowing language about races to the bottom in envi-
ronmental regulation and the need to enforce environmental law from NAFTA, but
failing to create institutional mechanisms for enforcing these environmental exhortations
(USTR, 2004, ch. 17).
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Environmental institutions
There are hundreds of environmental IOs, institutions designed to generate international
cooperation in dealing with particular environmental challenges, or in some cases
designed to promote environmental cooperation more broadly. These are the MEAs
referred to in the previous section. Many of these IOs have no real impact on international
trade. But some of them have rules that explicitly call for interference in international
trade in ways that contradict the WTO's basic rule of non-discrimination. They do this
either to prevent trade in particular goods altogether, to use trade discrimination as an
inducement to countries to join the institution, or to use trade discrimination as an
enforcement mechanism.
An example of the
rst of these three reasons for interfering in international trade can
be found with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora (CITES). This agreement is an example of an MEA that interferes with
trade in particular species of wildlife for the direct purpose of preventing trade in those
species. It prohibits member countries from engaging in international trade in species that
are deemed to be threatened with extinction. The prohibition is on any international trade
in the species, whether live specimens or processed parts (there are milder restrictions on
trade in species that are deemed endangered but not immediately threatened with extinc-
tion) (CITES, 1979). CITES does not mandate domestic conservation measures for the
relevant species. The choice of which species count as threatened with extinction is made
within the institution, and individual countries are able to get exceptions for particular
species (ibid., Article XV). There is no enforcement mechanism
per se
for countries that
fail to live up to their obligations under CITES. But some countries, particularly the USA,
have used various forms of pressure to convince non-complying countries to improve their
enforcement (DeSombre, 2000, pp. 173-9).
An example of the second of the three reasons for interfering in international trade, to
use trade discrimination as an inducement to join an environmental IO, can be found with
the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. This agreement reg-
ulates the production of a variety of substances, such as chloro
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uorocarbons (CFCs) and
halons, that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. It prohibits trade in any of these sub-
stances between member countries and non-members. It also allows signi
fl
cant time lags,
of a decade or more, between the requirements to reduce production of the relevant chem-
icals in developed countries and the requirements for developing countries (Benedick,
1991). The combination of these two elements, the prohibition on trade with non-
members and the time lag, was designed to provide an incentive for developing countries
to join the agreement. The logic was that if developing countries were allowed to produce
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