Despite an increasing global awareness of environmental concerns, setting internationally binding and ambitious commitments has proven exceedingly complex. As states are seeking alternative methods to support global environmental protection, this book takes a closer look at the possibility of using national trade measures that make market access conditional on the environmental impact of the production process abroad.

This timely book brings clarity to the debate on the new legal phenomenon of environmental border tax adjustments. It will help form a better understanding of the role and limits these taxes have on environmental policies in combating global environmental challenges, such as climate change.

From Exception to Promotion: Re-Thinking the Relationship between International Trade and Environmental Law tells a new, unconventional story of the nexus between international trade and environmental law - a story in which the keyword is synergy rather than conflict, and where the trade regime was always meant for something greater than simply trade liberalization. This ‘something greater’ was peace in the first half of the 20th century. Today, it is sustainable development, environmental protection, and social inclusion. Environmental protection is therefore neither antithetical to the overarching purpose of the trading system nor simply a ‘non-trade’ issue to be incorporated within the trade regime, but rather part of its very nature and purpose. By telling this ‘untold’ story of the nexus, this book intends to raise historical awareness and open a constructive discussion on the future of the trade regime and of international economic law governance at large.

In this first book to systematically compare how each of the world's major international trade organizations have handled environmental issues, leading specialists provide a balanced analysis of the development of trade and the environment rules in the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the International Organization for Standardization, and other key organizations. Deftly combining policy and theory, the authors offer a range of heuristics and normative orientations in an effort to understand one of the globe's most contentious and timely dilemmas. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This book examines the recent controversy between international trade and environmental policies. It analyses the use of environmentally-motivated trade policies, national environmental policies, and their relationships with the rules governing trade, critically examining proposals rule reform. A theoretical framework is provided for a consideration of the efficiency of environmental trade policies and an evaluation made of empirical links between environmental policy differences and trade flows. Concerns of developing countries over environmentally-motivated market access restrictions are highlighted in considering international trade rules and the agreements reached at UNCED.

How the environmental provisions in US preferential trade agreements affect both the environmental policies of trading partners and the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements. As trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization seem permanently stalled, countries turn increasingly to preferential trade agreements (PTAs) between smaller groups of nations. Many of these PTAs incorporate environmental provisions, some of which require trading partners to enact new domestic environmental laws, and use the enforcement mechanisms available within trade agreements as tools for environmental protection. In Greening through Trade, Sikina Jinnah and Jean-Frédéric Morin provide the first detailed examination of how the environmental provisions in US preferential trade agreements affect both the environmental policies of trading partners and the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements. They do so through a combination of in-depth qualitative case studies and quantitative analysis of an original dataset of 688 global PTAs. Jinnah and Morin explore the effects of linkages between PTAs and environmental treaties and the diffusion of environmental norms and policy through PTAs. Centrally, they argue that US trade agreements can serve as mechanisms both to export environmental policies to trading partner nations and third-party countries and to enhance the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements by strengthening their enforcement capacity. They caution that PTAs are not a panacea for environmental governance; deeper problems of unsustainable consumption and differential power dynamics between trading partners must be carefully navigated in deploying trade agreements for environmental protection.

The European Union and Global Environmental Protection begins with an introduction and assessment of the key EU competences, international and regional instruments and mechanisms, as well as the current legal framework in place at the EU level.