Trade and the Environment

The relevance of the WTO legal system for environmental protection is a central topic in general international law, WTO law and international environmental law. The relationship between WTO law and international and domestic efforts to protect the environment has moved to centre stage in WTO and international environmental law. It has also spurred the discussion on fragmentation in international law in recent years.

This book analyses these issues by examining the 'horizontal' interaction between WTO law and 'other' international law, the 'vertical' relationship between WTO law and domestic law, and the contents and the interrelations between fundamental provisions of WTO law. This study relies on established insights from legal theory in order to achieve greater clarity in legal argumentation. The main results of this analysis are applied to two topical instances of international regime interplay, namely the relevance of WTO law for international and domestic measures protecting the earth's climate and the ozone layer.

A series of controversial topics in WTO and general international law are addressed in this book, including the notion of conflicts of norms, and the resolution of conflicts of norms; the role of international law in WTO proceedings; extraterritorial jurisdiction and unilateral trade measures; proportionality and balancing of interests in international and WTO law; the core disciplines of the GATT and the TBT Agreement; process and production-based measures (PPMs) in WTO law; climate protection, protection of the ozone layer, and WTO disciplines.