Sustainable Development Provisions in the 1994 GATT/WTO Agreements

This chapter argues that, while the World Trade Organization (WTO) may have accepted sustainable development as an objective of its members, it is not clear that the WTO has successfully integrated either environment or social development concerns into trade policy-making, to date. It considers the three opportunities for integration discussed in Chapter 3, and the implications of attempts to respond to them within the WTO, in two phases. First, it considers the WTO Agreements after the conclusion of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and the 1994 Uruguay Round, and how they are interpreted by the WTO Panel and Appellate Body in trade disputes, as well as any progress in WTO negotiations with respect to the tensions identified earlier during that period. Second, it considers developments in the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations that were launched in 2001, directly before the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), and how subsequent WTO disputes have addressed these tensions.