Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
categories, above, and this one is not always clear. But beyond the advice and assistance
provided by institutions that also generate rules, there are IOs for which advice and assis-
tance is the primary role.
An example of such an organization is the UNCTAD. This institution plays no regu-
latory function. It was created originally to provide a political voice to the trade concerns
of developing countries. As that political bloc has fragmented, UNCTAD has gradually
found a new role in training o
cials from poorer countries in how best to interact with
the international trading system, and in setting up the bureaucracies necessary to allow
these countries to master the regulatory framework of international trade and thereby
participate fully in it
(
Barkin, 2006,pp. 109-10
)
.Development organizations, such as the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provide both technical and
fi
nancial
support for economic development, which a
ects both the trade patterns and environ-
mental management in recipient countries. The UNDP, which, along with the rest of the
UN system, has explicitly accepted the principle of sustainable development
(
e.g. UNDP,
2006
)
, is increasingly cognizant of the need to minimize the environmental impact of
development. This is true throughout the multilateral development community, both of
IOs like the UNDP that give grant aid, and development banks such as the World Bank
that primarily lend money.
Being non-regulatory, these institutions are not directly implicated in the relationship
between international trade rules and environmental management in the way that the
trade and environmental institutions discussed above are. But they are important none the
less for the relationship between trade and environment, for two reasons. The
ff
fi
rst is that
they assist countries that could otherwise not do so e
ll their international
obligations, both in terms of trade regulation and in terms of environmental manage-
ment. The second is that they have the potential to create a more sustainable path to devel-
opment, one that may well in the long term increase the proportion of
ff
ectively to ful
fi
countries
committed to international trade rules that allow for e
ective environmental stewardship.
As such, ensuring that these institutions maintain and, it is hoped, increase their com-
mitment to the environment can help to defuse the tension between trade and the envi-
ronment in the long term.
ff
Conclusion
The array of IOs to be found at the nexus of international trade and environment issues
is complex and bewildering. In part, this is because the issues themselves are complex and
multifaceted. IOs tend to proliferate on an issue-by-issue basis
(
Shanks et al., 1996
)
, and
groups of like-minded countries are free to start new institutions when the existing ones
fail to ful
ll a particular purpose. It is easy to portray the relationship between interna-
tional trade and environmental management as a zero-sum game. But the array of inter-
national institutions involved in the nexus between the two issues suggests that this need
not be the case: there is a variety of ways in which the two issues can interrelate, and the
future direction of this relationship, mediated through IOs, is not at this time entirely
clear.
fi
References
Andonova, Liliana (2003),
Transnational Politics of the Environment: The European Union and Environmental
Policy in Central and Eastern Europe
, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
