A discussion on the future of trade, investment and the environment. It sets out the trade, investment and environment agenda in the run-up to the Millennium Round of trade negotiations. Topics covered include: building markets for sustainable trade; environmental regulation; finance and transnational corporations; environmental regulation and international investment; and conflict resolution in the World Trade Organization. The contributors include Renato Ruggiero (WTO Director General), Brian Wilson MP (UK Trade Minister), and John Gummer MP (former UK Secretary of State for the Environment).
A comprehensive, critical analysis of the interactions between investment, trade and the environment. It examines the consequences of existing multilateral investment and trade regimes, including the WTO and the MAI for the environment, and asks how they should be reformed to protect it. In doing so, the text shows how these regimes can be greened without erecting protectionist barriers to trade that frustrate the development aspirations of poorer countries. The solution seeks to offer a way out of one of the most difficult dilemmas in international policy: how investment and trade can protect the environment without encouraging protectionism by the industrialized world.
Analyzing globalization and the increasing tension it has caused between the goals of free trade and environmental protection, International Trade and the Protection of the Environment provides a comprehensive and detailed legal analysis, both at the national and international level of what looks set to become the new legal order of the twenty-first century. This book asks the questions does the treatment of ‘measures tantamount to expropriation’ have the capacity to lead to a ‘regulatory chill’ on environmental protection and what are the possibilities for claims before the UK courts that are based on alleged violations of international law? To answer them the author offers: an informed and critical commentary on the continuing controversy on GMO products, in particular on the recent WTO award in the EC-Biotech dispute a comparison of the treatment of the expropriation under NAFTA and bilateral investment treaties with position under article one of the first protocol of the European convention on human rights an analysis of the human rights dimension to claims for environmental damage against multi-national corporations, focusing particularly on claims in the US under the Alien Trot Claims Act 1789 Incisive and current, this text is a valuable tool for postgraduate law students studying international and commercial law.
Reference tool to facilitate broader understanding and awareness of relationship between environment and trade which can then become the basis on which fair and environmentally sustainable policies and trade flows are built.
Conflicts between foreign investment law and environmental law are becoming increasingly frequent. On the one hand, the rise of environmental regulation poses significant challenges to foreign investors in several industries. On the other, the surge in investment arbitration proceedings is making States aware of the important litigation risks that may result from the adoption of environmental regulation. This study of the relationship between these two areas of law adopts both a policy and a practical perspective. It identifies the major challenges facing States, foreign investors and their legal advisers as a result of the potential friction between investment law and environmental law and provides a detailed analysis of all the major legal issues on the basis of a comprehensive study of the jurisprudence from investment tribunals, human rights courts and bodies, the ICJ, the WTO, the ITLOS, the CJEU and other adjudication mechanisms.
Nowhere has the divide between advocates and critics of globalization been more striking than in debates over free trade and the environment. And yet the literature on the subject is high on rhetoric and low on results. This book is the first to systematically investigate the subject using both economic theory and empirical analysis. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor establish a powerful theoretical framework for examining the impact of international trade on local pollution levels, and use it to offer a uniquely integrated treatment of the links between economic growth, liberalized trade, and the environment. The results will surprise many. The authors set out the two leading theories linking international trade to environmental outcomes, develop the empirical implications, and examine their validity using data on measured sulfur dioxide concentrations from over 100 cities worldwide during the period from 1971 to 1986. The empirical results are provocative. For an average country in the sample, free trade is good for the environment. There is little evidence that developing countries will specialize in pollution-intensive products with further trade. In fact, the results suggest just the opposite: free trade will shift pollution-intensive goods production from poor countries with lax regulation to rich countries with tight regulation, thereby lowering world pollution. The results also suggest that pollution declines amid economic growth fueled by economy-wide technological progress but rises when growth is fueled by capital accumulation alone. Lucidly argued and authoritatively written, this book will provide students and researchers of international trade and environmental economics a more reliable way of thinking about this contentious issue, and the methodological tools with which to do so.
Harnessing Foreign Investment to Promote Environmental Protection investigates the main challenges facing the implementation of environmental protection and the synergies between foreign investment and environmental protection. Adopting legal, economic and political perspectives, the contributing authors analyse the various incentives which encourage foreign investment into pro-environment projects (such as funds, project-finance, market mechanisms, payments-for-ecosystem services and insurance) and the safeguards against its potentially harmful effects (investment regulation, CSR and accountability mechanisms, contracts and codes of conduct).
