Increasing attention is being given to the nexus between international trade rules and environment/resource issues, especially how trade agreements and rules affect the global commons. To date, trade agreements largely have been confined to fostering environmental cooperation and promoting compliance with existing domestic environmental laws and regulations. The impact of such agreements, many argue, has been minimal in terms of having a tangible effect on the environment. However, current negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) offer the possibility of incorporating concrete environmental commitments within a traditional commercial trade agreement. Fisheries subsidies, seafood fraud, and other illegal fishing activities are mainstream issues for trade negotiations, not a radical effort to insert extraneous non-trade issues into trade negotiations. A review of the trade disciplines and measures in the tool boxes of trade negotiators provides numerous examples of how to do this, using the fisheries sector as an example.
Global Trade and Customs Journal