ABSTRACT
The debates over the consequences of trade liberalization on the environment have been steadily growing throughout the 1990s, crystallizing over the identification of economic channels whereby trade effects are passed on to the environment, and over the appropriate institutional vehicles to make trade more sustainable. Outstanding academic researches provided clear-cut insights on the hypothesis upon which trade liberalization effects on the environment could be predicted to turn positive or negative. What has emerged from this body of literature is that no systematic effect could be predictable, and that the environmental impacts of trade eventually remained an empirical question.
