IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/glenvp/v4y2004i2p24-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Big Chill: The WTO and Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Author

Listed:
  • Robyn Eckersley

Abstract

The increasing scope and disciplinary force of international trading rules have generated concern in the international environmental community concerning how far different types of trade restrictions in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Environmental Nongovernment Organizations (ENGOs) have argued that the WTO exerts a form of disciplinary neoliberalism that has a 'chilling effect' on both the implementation and negotiation of MEAs. This paper assesses this claim, particularly in the light of the stalled deliberations of the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment and recent WTO jurisprudence, and concludes that the WTO's trade agreements do serve to limit the scope and operation of MEAs, albeit mostly in subtle rather than direct ways. After exploring a range of options for reform it is concluded that the prospects for greening the WTO from both within and without are by no means bright. Copyright (c) 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Robyn Eckersley, 2004. "The Big Chill: The WTO and Multilateral Environmental Agreements," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 4(2), pages 24-50, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:4:y:2004:i:2:p:24-50
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/152638004323074183
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noémie Laurens & Jean-Frédéric Morin, 2019. "Negotiating environmental protection in trade agreements: A regime shift or a tactical linkage?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(6), pages 533-556, December.
    2. Juan He, 2019. "Do unilateral trade measures really catalyze multilateral environmental agreements?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(6), pages 577-593, December.
    3. Dirk De Bièvre & Arlo Poletti & Lars Thomann, 2014. "To enforce or not to enforce? Judicialization, venue shopping, and global regulatory harmonization," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 269-286, September.
    4. Millimet, Daniel L. & Roy, Jayjit, 2015. "Multilateral environmental agreements and the WTO," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 20-23.
    5. Margareta Timbur & Spiridon Pralea, 2013. "Relationship In The Context Of Sustainable Development," CES Working Papers, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 5(2), pages 279-299.
    6. Benjamin Faude & Michal Parizek, 2021. "Contested multilateralism as credible signaling: how strategic inconsistency can induce cooperation among states," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 843-870, October.
    7. Shiming Yang, 2020. "Trade for the Environment: Transboundary Hazardous Waste Movements After the Basel Convention," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(5), pages 713-738, September.
    8. Thomas Gehring & Benjamin Faude, 2014. "A theory of emerging order within institutional complexes: How competition among regulatory international institutions leads to institutional adaptation and division of labor," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 471-498, December.
    9. Terheggen, Anne, 2010. "The new kid in the forest: the impact of China's resource demand on Gabon's tropical timber value chain," MPRA Paper 37982, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Allen, Linda J., 2014. "Trade and Environment: A new Direction for Green Trade," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19.
    11. Peter Cihon & Matthijs M. Maas & Luke Kemp, 2020. "Fragmentation and the Future: Investigating Architectures for International AI Governance," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 11(5), pages 545-556, November.
    12. Millimet, Daniel L. & Tchernis, Rusty, 2009. "On the Specification of Propensity Scores, With Applications to the Analysis of Trade Policies," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(3), pages 397-415.
    13. Joanna I. Lewis, 2014. "The Rise of Renewable Energy Protectionism: Emerging Trade Conflicts and Implications for Low Carbon Development," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 14(4), pages 10-35, November.
    14. Dirk Bièvre & Ilaria Espa & Arlo Poletti, 2017. "No iceberg in sight: on the absence of WTO disputes challenging fossil fuel subsidies," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 411-425, June.
    15. Stefan Borsky & Paul A. Raschky, 2015. "Intergovernmental Interaction in Compliance with an International Environmental Agreement," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 161-203.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:4:y:2004:i:2:p:24-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.