Images of tear-gas filled streets during the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle woke the world up to the fact that there was a major controversy brewing about the legitimacy of the ability of the organization and sister institutions to trump nationally enacted laws protecting the environment and human rights in the name of free trade. Francioni (law, U. of Siena) presents the contributions of 12 academics from the field of international law who, on the whole, recognize that the complaints of protestors are legitimate and real and recommend some specific policy and legal changes in the structures of the international financial institutions and in free trade treaties between countries. The articles separately focus on genetically modified organisms, intellectual property rights, environmental law, technology transfer, labor rights, human rights sanctions, child labor, and the impact of NAFTA on the environment. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.

Analyzing globalization and the increasing tension it has caused between the goals of free trade and environmental protection, International Trade and the Protection of the Environment provides a comprehensive and detailed legal analysis, both at the national and international level of what looks set to become the new legal order of the twenty-first century. This book asks the questions does the treatment of ‘measures tantamount to expropriation’ have the capacity to lead to a ‘regulatory chill’ on environmental protection and what are the possibilities for claims before the UK courts that are based on alleged violations of international law? To answer them the author offers: an informed and critical commentary on the continuing controversy on GMO products, in particular on the recent WTO award in the EC-Biotech dispute a comparison of the treatment of the expropriation under NAFTA and bilateral investment treaties with position under article one of the first protocol of the European convention on human rights an analysis of the human rights dimension to claims for environmental damage against multi-national corporations, focusing particularly on claims in the US under the Alien Trot Claims Act 1789 Incisive and current, this text is a valuable tool for postgraduate law students studying international and commercial law.

This book explores the means by which economic liberalisation can be reconciled with human rights and environmental protection in the regulation of international trade. It is primarily concerned with identifying the lessons the international community can learn, specifically in the context of the WTO, from decades of European Community and Union experience in facing this question. The book demonstrates first that it is possible to reconcile the pursuit of economic and non-economic interests, that the EU has found a mechanism by which to do so, and that the application of the principle of proportionality is fundamental to the realisation of this. It is argued that the EU approach can be characterised as a practical application of the principle of sustainable development. Secondly, from the analysis of the EU experience, this book identifies fundamental conditions crucial to achieving this 'reconciliation'. Thirdly, the book explores the implications of lessons from the EU experience for the international community. In so doing it assesses both the potential and limits of the existing international regulatory framework for such reconciliation. The book develops a deeper understanding of the inter-relationship between the legal regulation of economic and non-economic development, adding clarity to the debate in a controversial area. It argues that a more holistic approach to the consideration of 'development', encompassing economic and non-economic concerns - 'sustainable' development - is not only desirable in principle but realisable in practice.

This extensive volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law probes the essential concepts, contemporary research, and key elements of law at the intersection of international trade and international environmental law. Its succinct, structured entries provide a definitive and comprehensive assessment of the interactions between these fields, written by internationally renowned and recognized experts. Analysing the key legal issues and questions raised by the impact of trade on the environment, the volume offers a thorough overview of the relationship between the World Trade Organization and the rules of environmental law, sustainability, and climate change. Each entry constitutes a nuanced and lucid introduction to the major cross-cutting topics in these dynamic fields, including examinations of national and regional approaches, WTO disputes, and the interface between trade, environment and areas such as human rights, investment and development. Featuring 107 entries divided into seven thematic parts, this volume is a landmark reference work which will prove invaluable to academics, students and researchers in international trade and environmental law, as well as public international law more broadly. It will also be a key resource for practitioners, policymakers and government officials working in any aspect of trade and environment.

Events like the Bhopal disaster, the sale of products harmful to human health and safety, and child labour, especially in resource-scarce settings, raise fundamental issues of human dignity and ecological integrity. From a legal perspective, and in the context of Foreign Direct Investment by Transnational Corporations in developing countries, they highlight the lacuna of a holistic international legal framework and its implementation. This book embodies a critique of the complex web of public international law principles on economics, human rights and the environment, and their convergence or lack thereof, related regional (South Asian) and domestic (Sri Lankan) legal arrangements, interventions of states and non-state actors towards just, equitable and sustainable development. It is a quest for a middle path in the multidisciplinary landscape of international law, development and North-South power dynamics; globalization of free trade and investment and of social and environmental interests; and salient aspects of the philosophical, socio-economic and legal fabric of South Asia, viewed against the evolving, controversial and elastic sphere of international relations and law where consensus has hitherto been an elusive dream.

In Johannesburg at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, over one hundred and eighty states assumed a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development economic development, social development, an environmental protection at the local, national, regional and global levels. This remarkable collection of papers, sponsored by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), demonstrates that sustainable development serves as a unifying concept with the potential to facilitate much-needed respect for international law and timely implementation of diverse and overlapping international commitments. It builds on the substance of a rich and complex debate at the intersections among economic, social, and environmental law, bringing together a broad cross-section of viewpoints and voices. The authors review recent developments in WTO discussions and negotiations, and in the recent decisions of the WTO Appellate Body, from a sustainable development law perspective. They also survey relevant new developments in trade and economic agreements at regional, inter-regional and bi-lateral levels. The various essays focus on sustainable development aspects of key issues in recent trade negotiations such as the Singapore Issues (investment, competition, trade facilitation, and government procurement), intellectual property rights, investment arbitration and the linkage between the WTO and multilateral environmental accords, (MEAand¿s).. Among the specific topics covered are the following: Emerging areas of law and policy in trade and sustainable development, The underlying development agendas in global trade law negotiations, Cooperation and potential negotiation on international competition law, Sustainable development aspects of intellectual property rights negotiations, Overlaps between multilateral environmental accords (MEAand¿s) and the WTO, Recent developments in WTO dispute settlement procedures and proceedings, Human rights and environmental opportunities from trade liberalisation and increased market acces, Human rights and environment impact assessment techniques used to analyse trade agreements, Recent developments in bi-lateral and regional trade agreements. Trade, investment, and competition law practitioners and negotiators in developed and developing countries will find this book of great value, as will development and environment law professionals with responsibility for trade and WTO law related matters. With rich contributions from leading trade law practitioners, academics, and WTO panel and appellate body roster members, Sustainable Developments in World Trade Law offers a constructive, timely and accessible expert analysis of recent discussions and advances in the field, providing an integrated and essential guide to some of the most important issues in international economic law today.

More than ten years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, this book critically reviews the achievements, limits and next frontiers of business and human rights following the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ trichotomy. The UN Guiding Principles acted as a catalyst for hitherto unprecedented regulatory and judicial developments. The monograph by Macchi proposes a functionalist reading of the state’s duty to regulate the transnational activities of corporations in order to protect human rights and adopts a holistic approach to the corporate responsibility to respect, arguing that environmental and climate due diligence are inherent dimensions of human rights due diligence. In the volume emerging legislations are assessed on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, as well as the potential and limitations of a binding international treaty on business and human rights. The book also reviews groundbreaking litigation against transnational corporations, such as Lungowe v. Vedanta or Milieudefensie v. Shell, for their human rights and climate change impacts. The book is primarily targeted at academic and non-academic legal experts, as well as at researchers and students looking at business and human rights issues through the lenses of legal studies (particularly international law and European law), political sciences, business ethics, and management. Additionally, it should also find a readership among practitioners working in the public or private sector (consultants, CSR officers, legal officers, etc.) willing to familiarize themselves with the expanding areas of liability, financial and reputational risks connected to the social and environmental impacts of global supply chains. Chiara Macchi is currently Lecturer in Law at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands.

This book explores the changing nature of international law and its ability to respond to the contemporary issues related to international environment, trade and information technology. The evolution of international law has reached a stage where we are witnessing diminishing power of the state and its capacity to deal with the economic matters challenging the existing notions of territory and sovereignty. Recent trends in international law and international relations show that states no longer have exclusive control over the decision-making process at the global level. Keeping this in mind, the book brings together the perspectives of various international and national scholars. The book considers diverse issues such as, sustainable development, climate change, global warming, Rio+20, technology transfer, agro-biodiversity and genetic resource, authority for protection of environment, human right to water, globalization, human rights, sui generis options in IP laws, impact of liberalization on higher education, regulation of international trade, intellectual property rights, collective administration of copyright, broadcast reproduction rights, implementation of copyright law, communication rights under copyright law, arbitration for IP disputes, doctrine of exhaustion of rights, trans-border reputation of trademark, information as an asset, cyber obscenity and pornography, e-governance, taxation of e-commerce, computer crime, information technology, domain names, research excellence in legal education, ideological perspective on legal education, challenges for law teachers, and clinical legal education. The topics, though diverse, are closely interrelated, with the common concern throughout being that the global environment, international trade, information technology and legal education need appropriate national normative and institutional responses as well as the global cooperation of members of the international community. Presenting reflections of a number of Asian, African and European scholars on these varied facets, the book is of great value to scholars, practitioners, teachers and students associated with contemporary international law.

This book explores the changing nature of international law and its ability to respond to the contemporary issues related to international environment, trade and information technology. The evolution of international law has reached a stage where we are witnessing diminishing power of the state and its capacity to deal with the economic matters challenging the existing notions of territory and sovereignty. Recent trends in international law and international relations show that states no longer have exclusive control over the decision-making process at the global level. Keeping this in mind, the book brings together the perspectives of various international and national scholars. The book considers diverse issues such as, sustainable development, climate change, global warming, Rio+20, technology transfer, agro-biodiversity and genetic resource, authority for protection of environment, human right to water, globalization, human rights, sui generis options in IP laws, impact of liberalization on higher education, regulation of international trade, intellectual property rights, collective administration of copyright, broadcast reproduction rights, implementation of copyright law, communication rights under copyright law, arbitration for IP disputes, doctrine of exhaustion of rights, trans-border reputation of trademark, information as an asset, cyber obscenity and pornography, e-governance, taxation of e-commerce, computer crime, information technology, domain names, research excellence in legal education, ideological perspective on legal education, challenges for law teachers, and clinical legal education. The topics, though diverse, are closely interrelated, with the common concern throughout being that the global environment, international trade, information technology and legal education need appropriate national normative and institutional responses as well as the global cooperation of members of the international community. Presenting reflections of a number of Asian, African and European scholars on these varied facets, the book is of great value to scholars, practitioners, teachers and students associated with contemporary international law.--

'This masterly written collection, from many experts, focuses on the efforts of policy makers, as well as regional and national interest groups, to invoke International Law as the tool for realizing the objectives of sustainable development. The authors provide a rich vein of recent State and organizational practices that can be profitably mined by both academics and practitioners exploring contemporary perspectives.' ASIL Newsletter UN21 Interest Group, June 2005.