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World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization is the foundation of international trade law. While there has been a flourishing of regional and bilateral agreements concluded in the past decade, all of these operate from the basic platform of WTO law as a starting point. IISD's Trade Program has focused much attention on the WTO, and how it might be made more responsive to the challenges posed by a concern for sustainable development.

The WTO not only sets rules which circumscribe the way environmental policies may be formulated, but it also embodies more general rules that guide the flow of trillions of dollars of economic activity across the borders of the world—activity that has enormous potential to frustrate or foster sustainable development.

As well, the WTO has been gradually moving to extend its authority into non-trade areas of domestic policy relevant to sustainable development, such as intellectual property rights, investment, services and competition policy.

The current negotiations under the Doha Mandate provide a number of clear areas of focus in the nexus that binds trade, environment and development.

Related Papers

• A Sustainable Development Roadmap for the WTO (PDF - 3.2 MB)
  The impasse in the Doha negotiations offers both grounds for concern about the current regime's model, and the breathing space in which to thoughtfully consider how that model might better serve today's needs. This short book argues that the WTO has committed to sustainable development as one of its basic objectives, and asks what the organization would look like if that objective were rigorously pursued. The answers (that range across areas as diverse as dispute settlement, accession, trade and environment, trade and development, and the negotiation process) identify what needs to be done and what role the WTO should play. The result is a timely roadmap for helping the WTO achieve its full economic, environmental and social potential.

• Parallel Importation: Economic and social welfare dimensions
  "Parallel imports" involve fundamental issues of trade and intellectual property policy. This briefing paper starts with an introduction to the concept of parallel importation, and proceeds to discuss the complex economic and developmental issues raised by it.

• Environmental Goods Negotiations
  This paper analyzes possible approaches for ensuring a balance in trade gains in the ongoing WTO negotiations on environmental goods. It begins with a realistic assessment of the negotiations under Para 31(iii) of the Doha Ministerial Declaration and touches upon the progress made in the negotiations so far vis-à-vis different Members' positions. It suggests that a combination of Special and Differential Treatment provisions and bringing environmentally preferable products of export interest to developing countries in the ambit of environmental goods, could offer a balanced deal to the developing countries.

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