In "The Greening of the WTO" (November/December 2001), Michael Weinstein
and Steve Charnovitz acknowledge, as most trade analysts do not, that it
is not increased trade that environmentalists object to; it is specific
agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
World Trade Organization (WTO). However, they should have taken the effort
to analyze the full environmental argument against these institutions
rather than asserting that the WTO is becoming environmentally benign.

Their analysis is wrong on several fronts. First, trade produces
environmental harm in importing countries because of pollution or public
health risks associated with the traded goods. Trade restrictions are not
the right way to solve this problem. But protections against the sale of
polluting or potentially unsafe products, protections that apply equally
to domestic and imported goods, are not trade restrictions -- and should
not be under the purview of a trade agreement. When the United States bans
the sale of narcotics, or Saudi Arabia bans liquor, no one accuses them of
protectionism. A European ban on the sale of hormone-treated beef or
genetically engineered soybeans is not a trade restriction. It is a
consumer safety rule -- even if it is based on cultural or religious
preferences -- and should not be controlled by a trade body. Weinstein and
Charnovitz disagree on the grounds that a precautionary principle aimed at
protecting against potential threats to public safety would allow for
"environmental zealotry." But why do we need a global trade body to
protect each nation against environmental zealotry? Should we expand its
jurisdiction to religious extremism as well? The existing models for the
WTO talks constitute nothing less than an international regime restricting
the rights of communities to regulate private property. Such a regime can
only weaken the claims of communities against those of investors.
Environmentalists' experience under NAFTA has been that such rules are
used against environmental protections.

Trade can also harm the three great global environmental commons: the
atmosphere, the oceans, and the genetic inheritance of the biosphere. The
authors assert that the world trade regime must somehow be protected from
"unilateral attempts by some member governments to protect the environment
through trade restrictions." Why? There are only two means by which the
global commons can be protected from overexploitation. One is through
international environmental agreements; the other is unilateral sanctions
imposed by responsible commons users upon abusers. Trade sanctions
constitute one of the few tools nations have against those who would
exploit the global commons. Such actions constitute self-defense. If the
world's fisheries are overfished by a few nations, all nations suffer;
depletions in the ozone layer that cause skin cancer observe no national
boundaries.

If the WTO continues to interpret its rules as limiting the right of
nations to protect their interests in the global commons,
environmentalists will be forced to continue to oppose it.