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



Current Agriculture, Food & Resource Issues

G.E. Isaac


Organization in 1995 from the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations represents the
international trade paradigm codifying the rights and obligations of nation-states that wish
to be WTO members. Similarly, the creation of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) from the1992 Earth Summit represents the international biodiversity paradigm
codifying the commitments to the protection of biodiversity made by the CBD’s ratifying
nations.

While there is a significant body of literature on how these multilateral paradigms
emerge (Gilpin, 2001), there is a limited amount of literature on what happens when these
multilateral paradigms overlap (Isaac, Phillipson and Kerr, 2002). In this article, the
international policy coordination problem arising from overlapping multilateral paradigms
is examined through a case study of the relationship between the WTO and a multilateral
environmental agreement known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the
Convention on Biological Diversity (Cartagena Protocol) with respect to international
trade in products of modern biotechnology. An institutional analysis methodology1 is
adopted to assess the degree of concert or conflict between these two multilateral
paradigms in order to understand the ramifications of the overlap for the Canadian agri-
food sector.

This article is organized as follows. In the next section, the context of the trade-
environment relationship will be presented and, in the section that follows, the two
overlapping multilateral paradigms will be outlined. In the final section, the impact of the
overlapping multilateral paradigms upon the international trade of products of modern
biotechnology will be discussed.

International Trade and Environmental Protection

The relationship between international trade agreements and measures to protect the
environment has received enough attention that in Articles 31 to 33 of the Doha Agenda’s
Ministerial Declaration there are calls for greater clarification on this issue. Despite this
attention, however, the actual record has not been that antagonistic at all. In 2001, the
WTO’s Committee on Trade and the Environment recognized 238 MEAs, 32 of which
were deemed to contain trade-distorting provisions (WTO CTE, 2001). Three particularly
trade-distorting MEAs include: the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered
Species 1973 (CITES); the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone
Layer 1987 (Montreal Protocol); and the Basel Convention on the Transboundary
Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal 1989 (Basel Convention). Despite
their trade-distorting provisions, to date no MEAs have been directly challenged under the
auspices of the WTO. Instead, they have peacefully co-existed.

The following question then emerges: What are the factors that explain why trade-
environment relationships are in concert and, inversely, could be in conflict? Applying an
institutional analysis methodology across the 32 most trade-distorting MEAs reveals that
two factors are common to all of them. First, when the environmental issue tackled by the

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