If you have a relevant resource (books, papers, bulletins, etc.) you would like to see announced in this section, please forward a copy for review by the BRIDGES staff to Hugo Cameron, hcameron@ictsd.ch. Submissions of publications to ICTSDs documentation centre would also be welcome (contact Matteo Rizzolli, mrizzolli@ictsd.ch).
DIRTY EXPORTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION: DO STANDARDS MATTER TO TRADE? By John S. Wilson, Tsunehiro Otsuki, and Mirvat Sewadeh, published by Trade, Development Research Group, 21 March, 2002. How to address the link between environmental regulation and trade was an important part of discussions at the WTO Ministerial in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. Trade ministers agreed to launch negotiations on trade and the environment, specifically clarification of WTO rules. Wilson, Otsuki, and Sewadeh address an important part of the background context for deciding whether or how to link trade agreements to the environment from a developing country perspective. The authors ask whether environmental regulations affect exports of pollution-intensive or "dirty" goods in 24 countries between 1994 and 1998. For the full text, visit http://econ.worldbank.org/view.php?type=5&id=13167. The authors may be contacted at jswilson@worldbank.org, totsuki@worldbank.org, or msewadeh@worldbank.org.
FROM URUGUAY TO DOHA: AGRICULTURAL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS AT THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION. By Thomas C. Beierle, published by Resources for the Future, March 2002. This paper examines current agricultural trade negotiations at the WTO, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalisation and developing countries’ economic growth and food security. Agriculture remains one of the most highly protected arenas of international trade. Although the 1994 Uruguay Round of trade talks succeeded in bringing agriculture into the rules-based trading system, the author argues it did little to actually reduce agricultural trade protection. This paper describes how three important actors in the agricultural trading system — the US, the EU, and developing countries — are positioning themselves in the current talks to deal with the unfinished business from the Uruguay Round. For the full paper, visit http://www.rff.org/disc_papers/PDF_files/0213.pdf.
"Economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions," by Alberto Ansuategi and Marta Escapa, in ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS, 2002. Recent empirical research has examined the relationship between certain indicators of environmental degradation and income, concluding that in some cases an inverted U-shaped relationship, which has been called an environmental Kuznets curve, exists between these variables. The paper finds that this relationship does not hold for greenhouse gas emissions. This paper explores the effect that the presence of intergenerational spillovers have on the emissions-income relationship. Using a numerically calibrated overlapping generations model of climate-economy interactions, it concludes that: (1) the intertemporal responsibility of the regulatory agency, (2) the institutional capacity to make intergenerational transfers, and (3) the presence of intergenerationally lagged impact of emissions constitute important determinants of the relationship between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions.
Electronic Resources
YAHOO wto_forum GROUP. Created by Yahoo!, 15 April 2002. Group members are able to exchange messages, store photos and files, coordinate events and more. There are also hundreds of links for news, consultants, law firms, articles, NGOs. There will be a weekly newsletter with short briefs on current trade news. For more information, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/.