The Trade and Environment Debate : Setting the Scene By Alan Oxley Setting

The trade and environment debate arose as result of pressure from environment groups in the industrialized economies to introduce environmental issues in the WTO. Along with the demand to include labor rights in the WTO and the insistence that NGOs have greater rights of participation in NGO processes, this marked a change in the pattern of deliberation in the WTO and its predecessor, the GATT Secretariat. This change is the addition of non-trade concerns to the work of the institution. Unlike most of the agencies of the system of the UN family in the seventies which routinely accepted debate on political issues unrelated to their core mission, the GATT remained focused on its technical brief – regulation and liberalization of trade.