The WTO and the Environment
The rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have far-reaching implications on the environment. Essentially, they make it more difficult, and in some cases impossible, for governments to enact laws designed to control resource exploitation and pollution.
Trade Uber Alles
There are two key legal concepts within the WTO which severely curtail governments' powers regarding environmental legislation: 'National Treatment' and 'Most Favoured Nation Status'. These concepts ensure that no distinction can be made between 'like' products from different countries. This makes it impossible for a country to impose bans, quotas, or other special regulations on foreign goods that have been produced in an environmentally damaging way.
For example, these WTO rules were used to shoot down the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act which banned the import of tuna caught in drift nets. Drift nets result in the unnecessary slaughter of dolphins and other species. Countries which used the drift nets argued that the U.S. law discriminated against the 'way' their product - tuna - was being caught, and that doing so was illegal under the WTO. They won their case.
Another WTO rule, Article XI, prohibits export controls, including all forms of quotas (import or export). Under this rule, governments cannot limit the exploitation of precious resources, and the result is that resources end up being exploited at unsustainable rates. Another result is that non-renewable resources are disappearing faster than ever, since the WTO rules essentially create a 'grab-it-while-you-can' scenario.
In the WTO agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBTs), a nation must prove, if challenged, that its environmental standards are both 'necessary' and 'least trade restrictive'. The first of these conditions runs counter to the 'precautionary principle', one of the fundamental principles of responsible environmental management. The idea behind the 'precautionary principle' is that it is 'better safe than sorry'; i.e. if it is strongly suspected that a product or a process is having (or will have) environmental or health impacts, it is better to regulate before the problem gets serious. The WTO rules, however, put the onus on governments to prove that dangers are real and significant, a task which is often impossible to do conclusively (until it is too late!).
The 'Chill Effect'
More often than not, the danger of being defeated under the WTO and being subject to the sanctions and fines imposed by WTO tribunals will cause governments to avoid creating environmental regulations in the first place. This has become known as the 'chill effect': regulations are not enacted because the risks associated with battling the WTO are perceived as being too high.
Also, because of built-in 'WTO Superiority Clauses", the WTO undermines Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), which include agreements concerning endangered species, global warming, and other issues. For example, government regulations created in order to respect an MEA may be challenged and defeated under the WTO based on the principle that WTO rules take precedence. So the 'chill effect' not only hinders government legislation, but it also acts to dissuade countries from creating or implementing environmental treaties.
Attempts to Greenwash the WTO
Recently Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has tried to give the impression that trade-related environmental concerns, at least within Canada, are being addressed by the newly created Environmental Assessment Framework. However, like the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) which was supposed to have kept NAFTA in line with regard to the environment, this framework incorporates no enforcement mechanisms. Its primary purpose is to keep environmental critics occupied ('give them a sandbox to play in') while the trade liberalization process marches inexorably onward.
Apologists for the WTO have pointed to Article XX, which allows governments to retain laws "related to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources" or "are necessary to protect human, animal or plant life and health". In practice, however, the 'least trade restrictive' clause makes it very difficult to draft such laws without running into trouble. This was the case when Venezuela, acting in the interests of oil refineries, challenged the U.S. Clean Air Act and won its case, forcing the U.S. to scrap laws which banned dirty gasoline. In actual fact, only one case - that in which France banned imports of Canadian asbestos - has ever succeeded in using Article XX for exemption.
WTO vs. Planet Earth
Environmentalists - and common sense - tell us that local, comparatively autonomous economies are more ecologically sound than one, massive global economy. The local approach encourages the preservation of biodiversity, the responsible allocation of resources, and a sustainable use of those resources. People are more likely to develop a sense of environmental responsibility when the effects of their consumption patterns are close at hand. The global approach, on the other hand, has many inherent problems: transport from distant corners of the planet causes large quantities of fossil-fuel pollution; wholesale exploitation in locations where production is cheapest results in rapid depletion of the resources and destruction of biodiversity; and the fostering of environmentally irresponsible consumers.
The WTO has its priorities upside-down. As escalating environmental degradation is reaching levels at which it threatens the stability of the entire biosphere, the WTO blithely continues to put international trade ahead of common sense. It really comes down to this: get rid of the WTO or get rid of the environment. All indications are that this planet isn't big enough for the both of them.