Business,trade and the environment: An agenda for stability in world trade

Conflicts between trade liberalization, as promoted by the World Trade Organisation, and demands for environmental protection have the potential seriously to disrupt the world's trading system to the point of detriment of, among others, the business community. The paper sets out the essential issues raised in the trade/environment debate, with some case study analysis as to how and why the problems have arisen. One of the principal constraints of freer trade on environmental policy making is fears of impacts on business competitiveness. The paper concludes that, while these fears are often exaggerated, they are justified for some environmentally intensive sectors, and they certainly constrain the introduction of environment policies. The paper makes proposals as to how the rules governing world trade, and their interpretation, could be modified to make domestic environmental policy making easier, and suggests that it is strongly in the interests of international business to see these modifications implemented. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.