ABSTRACT
The story of the trade and environment debate within and around the WTO is one of growing salience in the minds of negotiators and civil society, a continued failure to make any substantial progress in rewriting WTO rules, but significant changes in the way in which existing rules have been interpreted to deal with environmental concerns. This chapter examines the ways in which the expansion of trade may sometimes conflict with and sometimes support environmental regulation; highlights the main areas of trade-environment tensions - over product standards, processes and production methods, and trade measures in multilateral environment agreements - and considers the politics behind the debate.
