Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

Speth and several other national and internationalenvironmental leaders call for establishing a WorldEnvironment Organization (WEO) to help developand oversee global environmental policies. He says itis strange that we have World Trade Organization(WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), and anumber of other similar organizations but no WorldEnvironmental Organization (WEO). He asks us toimagine what might have happened with global environmentalpolicies if the developed nations “hadput as much energy into a WEO as they have put intothe WTO.”Case Study: Is Encouraging Global FreeTrade Environmentally Helpful or Harmful?A Difficult IssueThere is concern that current rules for reducingglobal trade barriers may weaken national lawsthat protect the environment, consumers, andworkers.Like it or not, we are in an age of rapid economic, political,and social globalization. Expanding internationaltrade is seen as a way to stimulate economiesaround the world, help distribute wealth, and decreasepoverty.According to the economic comparative advantagehypothesis, each country or place in a country oftenhas an advantage over other areas in producing or sellingone or more types of goods or services. These advantagescan result from various factors such as a poolof cheap or technically skilled labor or availability ofresources such as minerals, good soil, ample water, solarenergy, or wind.International free trade allows companies providinggoods and services to take advantage of thecheapest labor and resources anywhere in the world.In theory, this should also lower the market prices ofgoods and services for consumers. For example, recentlysome major American companies have been usingIndian workers as computer programmers becausetheir hourly wage is about one-fifth the wage of programmersin the United States. This has alarmedAmerican workers who have lost well-paying jobs inthis and other fields where jobs are being outsourced toother countries.On April 15, 1994, representatives of 120 nationssigned the Uruguay Round of the General Agreementon Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This is a revised versionof the 1948 GATT convention, which attempted tolower tariff barriers to world trade between membernations. The new GATT established a World TradeOrganization (WTO) and gave it the status of a majorinternational organization similar in stature andpower to the United Nations and the World Bank. TheWTO’s role is to enforce the new GATT rules of worldtrade and settle disputes about these rules betweennations.Currently, the WTO has 141 member countries.Representatives of the Quad Countries—the UnitedStates, Canada, Japan, and the European Union—determinemost WTO policy. GATT and the WTO are the resultof negotiations among the world’s major industrialnations, which regulate 90% of all international trade.GATT has removed some trade barriers that restrictinternational trade by developing nations. Butcritics complain that the system is designed to ensurethat the primary role of most developing nations is tosupply raw materials, such as minerals, timber, andagricultural commodities, to developed nations, whichturn these imported resources into high-priced goodstraded in international markets. As a result, critics saythat such developing nations get little of the incomegenerated by international trade.Most WTO officials are trade experts and corporatelawyers, representing primarily the interests oftransnational corporations. The WTO has no electedrepresentatives and is not subject to freedom of informationlaws or public review of its proceedings anddecisions. Any member country can charge any otherWTO member country with violating one of theWTO’s complex international trade rules.When this occurs, several things happen. First, thecase is decided in secret by a tribunal of three anonymousWTO judges, usually corporate lawyers with noparticular expertise in the issues being decided. Thereare no conflict-of-interest restraints on tribunal members,and no information about their possible conflictsof interest is available to the public.Second, all documents, transcripts, and details ofthe proceedings are kept secret and only the results areannounced.Third, only official government representatives ofthe countries involved can submit documents or appearbefore the tribunal.Fourth, decisions are binding worldwide and canbe appealed only to another tribunal of judges withinthe WTO. A final panel ruling can be appealed to theentire WTO but can be overturned only by agreementof all WTO members. This is virtually impossible becausethe winning country is unlikely to vote to overturna ruling in its favor.Any country (or part of a country) that violates aruling of WTO panels has four choices: amend its lawsto comply with WTO rules, pay annual compensationto the winning country, pay high tariffs imposed onthe disputed goods by the WTO, or find itself shunnedand locked out of global commerce.Proponents argue that this significant transfer ofpower from nations to the WTO is necessary and beneficialfor several reasons. First, globalization of trade isinevitable and we have to take part in guiding it. Second,http://biology.brookscole.com/miller14625