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. [...]