Environmental Protection in the WTO System: Issues to Worry About

Abstract

The debate on trade and other issues has been a hot subject in the WTO for a long period of time. The question relating to the linkage between trade and environment, however, transcends the debating issue, sometime leading scholar to absurd conclusions. The above quoted idea can represent the absurdity of some of the conclusions that writers can arrive at by standing only on one side of debate. This modest reflection tries to do the balancing of the two important subjects by way of demonstrating the failure of the WTO to properly deal with the environmental concern of the international community. As such, it is the conviction of this paper that environmental issues have remained unattended to and hence, it still remains for the international community to come up with reconciliatory mechanisms that can address the two concerns. In this regard, this paper will try to surface some of these proposals forwarded just to do that and see the advantages and pitfalls of these proposals particularly in relation to the developing countries.