ABSTRACT
The first aspect of the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and biosafety approaches is the placement of the savings clause in the preamble, as opposed to placement in those treaties’ operative provisions. The first additional paragraph reflects the view that trade and environmental agreements should be mutually supportive, with a view to sustainable development. Following the PIC model, the biosafety protocol includes a straightforward savings clause in the preamble. That clause clearly expresses the rule that savings clauses are designed to enunciate. A potential problem mitigated by the savings clause involves the protocol’s various opportunities for parties to deviate from their requirements through agreements between the parties or through the unilateral exemption of some living modified organisms from the protocol’s advance informed agreement requirements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body and the WTO Committee on Trade and the Environment have encouraged countries to seek to resolve multilateral environmental issues through negotiation.
