International Law and its Relationship to Trade, Environment and Sovereingty

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2012 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, grade: A, , course: LAW, language: English, abstract: We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and
grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human
activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs
(United Nations Millennium Declaration, GA Res. 55/2).
Since the increasing pressure on '' fair trade'' emphasized by massive street
demonstrations at the 1999 Ministerial Conference in Seattle, the World Trade
Organization( WTO) has had to face new objectives raised by political, religious
and ideological interests, labor, animal and women's right. The environmental
issue has moved beyond local and even national boundaries into the foreign
policy debate, since actions in one country have had adverse environmental
effects on another. As a consequence, public interests has intensified, in the
light of high profile trade and environmental concerns that extends into some
of these new sensitive areas such as the role of science in risk assessment, the
conservation of endangered species, the cross border movement of genetically
modified organisms( GMOs) and measures to protect public health.
Economists, lawyers and environmentalists have called for international
agreements, which abrogate national sovereignty and delegate foreign policy to
international agreements. Trade and environmental issues have come to the
forefront of foreign policy, challenging and reshaping traditional interactions
between trade and environment. Varieties of demands on the growing lists of
trade and environmental issues have driven international treaties and
agreements, which seem to have high costs with low benefits or '' a chilling
effect'' (Conca, 2000).
Due to new problems and demands, the density of international institutions
has risen in the new world order. With increasing numbers of international treaties and organizations, different international norms have become more
intrusive on each other. This proposal seeks to study'' international law and its
relationship to trade, environment and sovereignty, with focus on Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety'' as a case study to ''evaluate a principle research
question: what are the contradictions between different approaches towards the
environment of the WTO and multilateral environmental agreement (MEAs)? The
aim of the case study is to find general contradictions between the WTO and
MEAs and to analyze the overlap issues between different sets of multilateral
agreements. [...]