Sydney Pezza-Luther: Blog Post 3

The World Trade Organization main goal is free trade and focuses on lowering trade barriers around the world. The WTO went into effect in 1948 with twenty-three signatures and the trade aspect has increased dramatically over the years. Since the 1950s world trade has grown over twenty-seven fold in volume. Through this expansion of trade, the competition between nations increased as well. Countries are therefore focused on the economic benefits from the World Trade Organization and often undermine the environmental concerns that are directly related with trade. On the the WTO website it clearly states “there is no specific agreement dealing with the environment”, as a result, the WTO should adopt environmental standards for countries to soon follow.
The many countries involved in the WTO focus on practice that allow them to produce the most amount of goods in the quickest amount of time, rather than focusing on sustainable practices. This can be seen in the Mexico tuna case where their catching system for tuna was also capturing dolphins, which lead to the death of many dolphins. This controversy was brought to WTO and they declared that countries cannot restrict imports except in very limited cases. Later another case occurred where countries who exported shrimp were using methods which killed endangered sea turtles. The WTO again ruled that countries could not prohibit the imports of their goods.
In addition to the high demand of produce and goods it has lead to an increased amount of transportation services, which in turn increases the greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the high demand of trade has led to the depletion of many resources. Overfishing is crucial problem in the oceans today and is causing a major decrease in numerous fishing populations such as tuna and cod. Billions of people rely on fish for a source of protein and income, as result in order to sustain fish population sustainable practices must be emplaced.
Though it may be a struggle at first for the the World Trade Organization to implicate environmental standards for countries to follow, it is crucial to the growing world we have today especially with the issues regarding climate change. The WTO should create a cap and trade system to limit emissions between countries, set limits for cutting down forests and also develop a system for sustainable practices in order to trade.  

Comments

  1. Victoria PierreNovember 11, 2017 at 7:02 PM

    Sydney I am glad you brought this perspective up. I do not think that it would not be a struggle for the WTO to have environmental standards for countries ,because other countries are apart of the Paris Agreement. The only struggle that may happen is getting ALL countries involved. I wonder if the UN is involved with preserving our environment if they can work with the WTO as well to help them come up with an agreement.

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    1. UnknownNovember 12, 2017 at 12:47 PM

      Yes, I agree there should be trade regulations to create a sustainable environment so we can prevent exploiting our resources. In order to trade, countries should have to fulfill certain requirements in the WTO which is similar to the Paris Agreement.

      Delete
  2. Jared RostkowskiNovember 12, 2017 at 1:00 PM

    I definitely agree with a lot you say here. One of, if not the only, downside to the WTO is the lack of environmental standards. Environmental protection and conservation is a huge deal in 2017. When the WTO was made in 1948 when people could care less about the environment. So the WTO definitely needs to get with the times and make some changes. They have to understand the importance of the environment, and that sometimes making the decision to benefit the environment is better than making a decision to benefit trade.

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  3. Tom PilatNovember 12, 2017 at 6:43 PM

    I agree that the WTO needs some updating. Environmental issues are prevalent more than ever in today's society, so having standards are very important. It will most likely be too big of a challenge unfortunately to get countries to adhere to standards which strongly affect the amount of product they produce. However, with the continual increase of products going green and being safer for the environment, something has to happen.

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    1. UnknownNovember 12, 2017 at 7:18 PM

      Yes it would be a challenge at first for countries to follow environmental restrictions in order to be apart of the WTO however, it would be to the best benefit and overtime as a population we will have to adapt to the changes.

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  4. UnknownNovember 12, 2017 at 8:55 PM

    I like that you brought this argument up. As trade moves more and more freely internationally, and more and more goods are produced, the environmental impacts will only increase. Unfortunately, given the stall of the last round of WTO negotiations, I doubt that we will see any climate related restrictions on trade being implemented through the WTO. Hopefully, these necessary restrictions can be implemented through other bodies.

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