WTO: World Trade Report 2010 - World Trade Organization

world trade report 2010
tariff would be optimal because it would decrease the
rate of resource extraction and reduce habitat loss.
However, in the second case the effect of a tariff is
ambiguous because it affects habitat conservation both
through reducing resource extraction and expanding
other economic activities.
If habitat is affected adversely by the conversion
of resources to other uses, environmental
standards and eco-label schemes could efficiently
address the problem.
While mandatory environmental standards set quality
conditions to be adhered to by each producer, an ecolabel
is a certification scheme that provides information
to consumers, helping them to identify environmentfriendly
products. An eco-label can only achieve its
objective if consumers hold preferences for
environmental amenities. In that circumstance, eco-label
schemes may be able to achieve similar environmental
goals to those of environmental standards. Moreover, in
situations where governments cannot impose an
environmental standard on foreign firms, an eco-label
scheme is the most efficient policy to implement.
The political economy of trade policy in
natural resource sectors
The socially optimal rate of resource extraction
may be hard to obtain when trade and conservation
policies are influenced by special interest groups.
The effect of trade opening on resource extraction
in this context is ambiguous.
National resource abundance and
regional integration
A two-way relationship exists between natural
resources and regional integration. Regional
integration affects resource-rich and resourcescarce
countries differently. These effects, in turn,
shape the incentives for these countries to engage
in regional integration.
The integration of two resource-abundant countries
with low tariffs and non-tariff barriers on natural
resources, and similar production structures with limited
manufacturing activity, is likely to lead to limited trade
creation and potentially large trade diversion effects.
On the other hand, regional integration may enable a
resource-abundant country to diversify its production
and export structure by relaxing the constraints it faces
in developing a manufacturing sector.
Regional integration may assuage concerns about overexploitation
of natural resources and other potential
negative consequences of international trade on the
environment as provisions on natural resource
management are sometimes included in regional and
bilateral free trade agreements.
See page 112.
A number of studies point to the possibility that the rate
of resource utilization may be greater than the socially
optimal rate because of poor governance or lobbying
activities. This is particularly true in countries where
institutional checks and balances on government
activity are weak.
Trade openness affects both incentives to lobby the
government and the quality of institutions in which
policy-makers operate. While the effect on lobbying is
ambiguous, recent studies highlight a positive effect of
trade on institutional quality and hence on efficient
resource utilization.
In the presence of lobbying activities, international
transfers are the most appropriate policy to
address negative cross-border effects associated
with the excessive extraction of resources.
By inducing the exporting government to increase
resource stocks, international transfers such as debtfor-nature
swaps are the first-best policy to improve
management of a natural resource whose depletion
creates negative cross-border effects ignored by the
market (externalities). A trade sanction may have exactly
the opposite effect as it hurts the politically organized
resource sector.
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