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Trade Policies for a Circular Economy
From its initial focus on minimizing waste generation the circular economy has evolved into a broad-based approach to make resource use more sustainable. A big part of the appeal of a circular economy is the opportunities it creates not only for resource savings and better human health and environmental outcomes but also for trade and economic diversification.
Trade and Deforestation
Forest plays a significant role in the overall balance of carbon in the atmosphere. Forest carbon sequestration can potentially reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However when deforestation takes place carbon is released to the atmosphere again. Globally it has been estimated that about 11% to 39% of all carbon emissions from human origin come from the forest sector (Hao et al. 1990). Regarding global warming the balance between forest conservation and deforestation can change forest sector activities from a solution to a problem and vice versa.
Typology of Environment-Related Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
The last 25 years have witnessed a rapid increase in regional trade agreements (RTAs). Although RTAs generally aim at lowering tariff and non-tariff trade barriers an increasing number of trade agreements extend their scope to cover specific policy areas such as environmental protection and sustainable development. This paper establishes a comprehensive typology and quantitative analysis of environment-related provisions included in RTAs. The analysis covers all the RTAs currently into force that have been notified to the WTO between 1957 and May 2016 namely 270 trade agreements. While environmental exceptions along with environmental cooperation continue to be the most common types of environment-related provisions many other different types of provisions are incorporated in an increasing number of RTAs. The common feature of all environment-related provisions including environmental exceptions is their heterogeneity in terms of structure language and scope.
The Relation between International Trade and Freshwater Scarcity
It is becoming increasingly important to put freshwater issues in a global context. Local water depletion and pollution are often closely tied to the structure of the global economy. With increasing trade between nations and continents water is more frequently used to produce exported goods. International trade in commodities implies long-distance transfers of water in virtual form where virtual water is understood as the volume of water that has been used to produce a commodity and that is thus virtually embedded in it. Knowledge about the virtual-water flows entering and leaving a country can cast a completely new light on the actual water scarcity of a country. For example Jordan imports about 5 to 7 billion m3 of virtual water per year which is in sharp contrast with the 1 billion m3 of water withdrawn annually from domestic water sources. This means that people in Jordan apparently survive owing to the import of water-intensive commodities from elsewhere for example the USA.
National Environmental Policies and Multilateral Trade Rules
This paper provides an overview of institutional economic and legal aspects of the relationship between national environmental policies and the multilateral trading system. In particular it analyses some of the difficulties the WTO Dispute Settlement System faces when having to evaluate disputes on national environmental policies that have an impact on trade. From an economist's point of view it would be desirable that optimal environmental policies i.e. policies that correct existing market failures be ruled consistent with multilateral trade law. This paper argues that WTO law in theory provides appropriate tools to ensure rulings that are consistent with economic thinking. Yet the paper also argues that economists have a rather imperfect knowledge of the precise welfare effects of different types of environmental policies. In practice therefore it is questionable whether economists are able to give adequate guidance to legal experts when it comes to the evaluation of national environmental policies. This is one of the reasons why there continues to be some degree of uncertainty as to the possible interpretations of certain WTO rules in the context of environmental disputes.
Trade and Fisheries
In this report we first give a brief overview of trade in seafood and seafood production. We then review the basic bioeconomic theory of the fishery and pinpoint why fisheries are different from most other industries. We next review the theoretical literature on trade and renewable resources that shows how unconventional outcomes from trade liberalization can emerge. Given this background we discuss the most important policy issues in relation to seafood and trade including sections on managing the global commons and domestic trends in management. In the final section we discuss specific issues that are germane to the WTO and its rules.
How do natural disasters affect services trade?
This paper is the first in the literature to examine the impact of natural disasters on trade in services. We measure the magnitude of natural disasters using two distinct sets of variables and quantify the effect of natural disasters on trade in services using a structural gravity model.