Trade, Sustainable Development, and the Environment

Gallagher, Kevin P., and Jacob Werksman, eds. 2002. The Earthscan Reader on International Trade and Sustainable Development. London: Earthscan.

Deere, Carolyn L., and Daniel C. Esty, eds. 2002. Greening the Americas: NAFTA's Lesson for Hemispheric Trade. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Paehlke, Robert C. 2003. Democracy's Dilemma: Environment, Social Equity, and the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

The relationship among the international trade regime, environmental regulation, and the concept of sustainable development is one that is the focus of considerable attention among both academics and negotiators. There has been considerable evolution in the discussion of this issue in the past decade or so, from the trade-is-good vs. trade-is-bad debate of that era to a considerably more nuanced discussion today. Three recent volumes that participate in this discussion do so in different ways, and provide both a variety of perspectives on the issue and a good overview of the state of the debate. None of the volumes focus exclusively on the general relationship among trade, sustainable development, and the environment, but nonetheless taken together they generate three common themes that come out of the current state of the literature.

The Earthscan Reader, edited by Kevin Gallagher and Jacob Werksman, would seem on the face of it to be the volume most focused on the interrelationship in question here. This volume is a reader, intended to provide an overview of the state of the literature on this issue rather than to probe a particular aspect of it or put forward a particular argument. In this aim, the volume succeeds well. It is in fact broader than the title indicates; it might be more accurately titled Globalization, the International Economy, and Sustainable Development. On specifically trade-related issues, it has chapters that cover investment rules, intellectual property rules, and health and safety rules as well as discussions of WTO dispute resolution and the relationship between the WTO and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). With respect to globalization more broadly, it has chapters on the environmental policy race to the bottom, the 92 environmental Kuznets curve, international competition policy, and fishing subsidies.

The chapters are well chosen to provide good overviews in a range of specific issues relating to economic globalization and environmental regulation. They are generally technical enough to give the reader a good feel for the details of the issues without being so technical as to be inaccessible. They also tend to provide both an up-to-date and a nuanced version of their particular issue-area. The volume as a whole also displays a fairly even balance between those generally sympathetic to the current international economic regime, and those less sympathetic. The chapters do not always fit together well, but the volume is a reader, so they should not be expected to. The volume as a whole is poorly edited; as an example, an article entitled "Bridging the Trade-Environment Divide" is labeled in the page headers "Building the Trade-Environment Divide." But on the whole, the volume is an excellent state-of-the-field exercise.

Greening the Americas, edited by Carolyn Deere and Daniel Esty, is a much more focused volume that looks at NAFTA specifically, rather than at the international trade regime more broadly. It is divided into four general sections. The first section looks at the role of the environment issue in the negotiation of NAFTA, and in particular Mexico's negative response to this role. The second section looks at NAFTA's environmental performance, the third at NAFTA's environmental provisions. Both of these sections are focused on the Mexican experience, and Greene and Esty conclude from them that Mexico suffered neither economic nor environmental damage from the environmental aspects of the NAFTA. The fourth section looks at whether the lessons learned from the NAFTA experience can be applied to negotiations towards a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Greene and Esty's core conclusion is based on this last section...