The WTO and the Cartagena Protocol: International Policy Coordination or Conflict?

Number 4/2003/p.116-123

A Journal of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society

The WTO and the Cartagena Protocol:
International Policy Coordination or Conflict?

Grant E. Isaac

Associate Professor of Biotechnology Management,

College of Commerce, University of Saskatchewan

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Agricultural
Economics Society (Montreal, July 2003) in a session entitled “The Ramifications
of Multilateral Environmental Agreements for the Agri-food Sector”. Papers
presented at CAES meetings are not subjected to the journal’s standard
refereeing process.

The Issue

International policy coordination is a challenging exercise requiring policy
rapprochement among sovereign nations that often have very different political
economy situations. Successful efforts may even result in the creation of multilateral
paradigms such as trade agreements or multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).
Typically, there is overlap between these independent paradigms; sometimes in the nexus
there is policy coordination and other times there is conflict. An understanding of the
factors that account for coordination and conflict is crucial in ensuring that any benefits
from policy coordination that may be achieved in one paradigm are not eroded through
conflicts with another paradigm. This article presents a case study of the implications of
overlapping multilateral paradigms - the World Trade Organization and an MEA known
as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety - for international market access of biotech-
nology-based agri-food products.

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