A WWF International, Centre for International Environmental Law (US),
Oxfam-GB and Community Nutrition Institute (US) Discussion Paper, May 1998
1. Executive Summary
Four years after the completion of the Uruguay Round in Marrakech, the WTO's dispute settlement chickens are coming home to roost. The chickens took wing during the Uruguay Round negotiations when negotiators in the then GATT member countries strengthened and broadened the scope of international trade rules without due reference to social and environmental policies and laws. Most of these policies and laws are made at national level, but the WTO also now finds itself veering closer to collision with international law and agreements designed to promote sustainable development.
This discussion paper shows how recent WTO dispute panel and Appellate Body Rulings on trade restrictions on beef, bananas and shrimps, conflict with health, development and environmental policy objectives. The WTO's ruling on the EU-US Beef Growth Hormone dispute maintains that the burden of proof for health regulations restricting trade rests on policy makers seeking to protect human health, rather than those seeking to promote liberalized trade. The WTO's ruling against EU trade preferences for bananas from Caribbean islands will increase poverty there and could even threaten the economic and political stability of some of these countries. The WTO's ruling against the US import ban on shrimps caught by methods which kill tens of thousands of endangered sea turtles annually threatens efforts to conserve migratory species, the Global Commons and undermines international conservation agreements.
As well as threatening sustainable development, the nature and manner of the WTO's settlement of these disputes could ultimately threaten the integrity of the multilateral trading system. These disputes clearly illustrate serious policy conflicts that the Uruguay Round negotiations, and the dispute settlement process it created, could not and cannot address. Exercise of these WTO rules also has the effect of putting health, development and environmental policy decisions in the hands of trade policy makers and international jurists working behind closed doors.
It seems unlikely that governments or civil society in WTO member countries will tolerate this state of affairs for long. This compendium of WTO disputes is supposed to underline the urgency with which WTO Members must commit themselves to broad reform of the institution and its rules. Some elements of that reform are drawn out in the context of each dispute. The paper ends with recommendations for more fundamental reforms which entail the WTO relinquishing or sharing with other intergovernmental bodies its jurisdiction over socially and environmentally related trade disputes.
