2010 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 43-54
The purpose of this paper is to analyze key factors that brought about significant changes in the WTO environment negotiations, from various perspectives of international political theory. Under the Doha Development Agenda, the focus of the negotiations has shifted from the “trade measures for environmental purpose” to “trade liberalization of environmental goods and services.” Then, major states’ positions in the negotiations have become closer each other. Eventually, the EU and United States jointly made a proposal for liberalizing trade in climate-friendly goods and services. These significant changes in the negotiations are due to the conflicts in international institutions and/or in norms between the two different issues of free trade and the environment. This paper suggests that when two or more different issues are interrelated, international negotiations should seek to ease the conflict among different international institutions and/or to achieve a compatibility of norms among different issues.
