The World Trade Organization, the environment, and the ecological critique

The article examines the way in which environmental issues are testing the World Trade Organization (WTO). The analysis refers to global political economy, and to ecological economics, The first section deals with the handling of the environment. The second is devoted to the ecological critique, and appraises its main proposals. Three particular points are made: (1) The environment did not appear on the agenda of the Uruguay Round. Today, however, the WTO can no longer disregard it: the ecological critique has transformed the debate by introducing the physical limits of the biosphere and the dominance of politics in the organisation of trade. (2) The WTO Secretariat is now prepared to debate the substance of the ecological critique; it recognises that trade policy is situated in a limitless field of contestability, in particular concerning the status of free trade and balanced, safe and fair trade. (3) Yet the WTO confines itself to applying exogenous standards in settling environment-related trade disputes. These standards are set by multilateral agreements in varied configuration and by international institutions of hybrid status. The transfers of authority implied by the use of such exogenous standards have now become a crucial issue in the global political economy of trade and the environment.