The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) contains a set of general exceptions to its obligations\u2014Article XX. Two of those exceptions (XX(b) and XX(g)) provide space for sheltering environmental measures from the strictures of GATT law, provided certain conditions are met. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) also contains exceptions, including an environmental exception, in Article XIV, as does the plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement (Article XXIII).<\/p>\n
Most modern RTIAs will contain provisions that echo GATT\u2019s general exceptions (or simply incorporate them by reference). Some (but fewer) will do the same for GATS Article XIV. There are a few ways in which this might be done so as to grant greater policy space for environmental regulations.<\/p>\n
First, the RTIA\u2019s general exceptions could affirm that they cover threats to environment as an acceptable cause for breaching the agreement. GATT Article XX(b) covers measures \u201cnecessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health<\/em>,\u201d without mentioning the environment explicitly. While panels have repeatedly interpreted the exception as covering environmental measures,7<\/sup> it is useful to have text in the RTIAs\u2019 exceptions that indicates the parties\u2019 explicit agreement that this interpretation is correct. Similarly, Article XX(g) covers measures \u201crelating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources,\u201d without defining exhaustible natural resources as including living resources (e.g., animals) or the atmosphere, though the WTO\u2019s Appellate Body has made it clear that both might be included.8<\/sup><\/p>\n There is similar language in GATS, at Article XIV, though it does not include anything like GATT Article XX(g), and some RTIAs have similar language on exceptions for trade in services. As well, some RTIAs will have language similar to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement exceptions in their chapters on government procurement. Those exceptions could benefit from a clarification similar to that made for trade in goods.<\/p>\n A second useful innovation is to have the general exceptions apply more broadly than they do in the WTO. The GATT only deals with trade in goods, and thus the general exceptions fail to cover such domestic measures as subsidies, investment, services, technical regulations and standards, and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) contains a set of general exceptions to its obligations\u2014Article XX. Two of those exceptions (XX(b) and XX(g)) provide space for sheltering environmental measures from the strictures of GATT law, provided certain conditions are met. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) also contains exceptions, including an… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":119,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"3"},"class_list":["post-217","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/217\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/toolkits\/sustainability-toolkit-for-trade-negotiators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}