Trade and Environment

The trade and environmental regimes are two of the most dynamic regimes in all of international law. There are physical and economic effects of trade on the environment. This article briefly considers this relationship, because empirical questions about the actual effects of free trade on the environment form an important part of the backdrop for the trade and environment debate. This article mainly focuses on the second type of relationship, that is, the legal interactions between the two regimes. The issue that has spawned a large literature, reflecting very different perspectives is the extent and ways in which trade helps or hurts the environment. The article considers vectors through which trade can also cause environmental harm indirectly and suggests wide array of criteria in assessing the compatibility of environmental measures with the trade regime.