This book offers a thorough examination of the key regulatory frameworks governing international waste trade. It explores the potential of the concept of “sustainable development” to integrate divergent regulatory approaches under WTO law and identifies crucial elements of a more comprehensive solution for regulating international waste trade.

The book gives a first-time structured overview of trade-related aspects of international economic law and comparative commercial law, including dispute resolution, in the Eurasian region. It is focused on the countries in the Caucasus, Central Asia, as well as Russia.

Waste tends to be understood as the potentially polluting and unsolicited by-product of our daily lives, a source of risk for the environment and human health. Nonetheless, a transboundary market for wastes as valuable raw materials and second-hand goods has emerged, and states ship wastes to specialised disposal and recycling sites abroad.This book provides a thorough analysis of the Basel Convention and the applicable OECD and EU frameworks of regulation. The author adopts a legal approach that encompasses the environmental, human rights, and WTO law aspects of waste trade. It explores the potential of the concept of “sustainable development” to integrate divergent regulatory approaches under the umbrella of the WTO in particular, and identifies crucial elements of a more comprehensive and sustainable solution for international waste trade.

This book analyses whether, and how, equity and equitable principles can be employed as juridical tools in the legal reasoning of judges and lawyers in World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes where there is interaction between norms derived from the multilateral trade regime and other international legal regimes. Bringing the literature on equity and equitable principles in international law up to date this book tackles several legal problems which have emerged in WTO dispute settlement practice as well as engaging with the concept of the fragmentation of international law. The book provides an original argument about the role and significance of equity and equitable principles in the debate over fragmentation by providing a coherent methodology for addressing conflicts and overlaps between WTO and non-WTO norms in the context of Dispute Settlement Body proceedings.

The announcement by China that it will implement a national emissions trading scheme confirms the status of this instrument as the pre-eminent policy choice for mitigating climate change. China will join the dozens of existing and emerging schemes around the world - from the EU to California, South Korea to New Zealand - that use carbon units (otherwise known as emissions permits or carbon credits) to trade in greenhouse gas emissions in a multi-billion dollar global carbon market. However, to date, there has been no consensus about this pre-eminent policy instrument being regulated by international economic law through the World Trade Organization, international investment agreements, and free trade agreements. Munro addresses this issue by evaluating whether carbon units qualify as 'goods', 'services', 'financial services', and 'investments' under international economic law and showing how international economic law applies to emissions trading scheme in diverse and unexpected ways. Further, by engaging in a comparative assessment of schemes around the world, his book illustrates how and why all emissions trading schemes engage in various forms of violations of international economic law which would not, in most instances, be justified by environmental or other exceptions. In doing so, he demonstrates how such schemes can be designed or reformed in ways to ensure their future compliance.

Waste management poses increasing challenges to both the protection of the environment and to human health. To face these challenges, this book claims that environmental law needs to shift attention from media-specific pollution regimes to integrative life-cycle approaches of waste management i.e., from the prevention of waste generation to the actual handling of wastes. Furthermore, the cooperation of States and the establishment of coordinated activities is essential because states can no longer have separate standards for wastes posing transboundary risks and for ‘purely domestic’ wastes. Drawing upon both International and EU law, the book provides a detailed analysis of the regimes set up to deal with the transboundary movement of wastes and ship-source pollution, so as to elucidate the obligations and legal principles governing such regimes. It concludes that treaty obligations concerning transboundary movements of wastes are inapplicable to ship wastes while on board ships and on land. However, despite the limitations of the transboundary movement of wastes regime, the principle of Environmentally Sound Management (ESM) embodied in this regime has gradually transformed into a legal principle. ESM works to address the legal gaps in the regulation of wastes, and consequently, it provides the desired coherence to the legal system since it acts as a bridge between several regulatory and sectoral levels. Furthermore, ESM offers a new light with which to understand and interpret existing obligations, and it provides a renewed impetus to regimes that directly and indirectly govern wastes. This impetus translates into greater coordination and the establishment of cross-sectional policies. By offering alternative ways to solve problems linked to the management of ship wastes in the sea-land interface, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in International Environmental Law.

International economic law guides and shapes globalization and the future of the world economy, our human societies, and the Earth. The rules which facilitate trade and investment could defend the interests of Hermes, Greek god of commerce and thieves, or learn to draw inspiration from Athena, goddess of justice, wisdom, and crafts. This volume explores how trade and investment agreements could promote more sustainable development, rather than increasing the negative social and environmental impacts of economic growth. States and other actors are attempting to integrate social and environmental considerations into trade and investment policies, towards more sustainable development. Analysing their efforts, this volume offers insights into the ways that commitments to sustainability are being operationalized in the texts of economic treaties themselves. Written by a renowned expert jurist and professor of law, this book examines the measures being debated in the WTO and adopted by States in a selection of innovative and flexible regional and bilateral trade and investment accords. With legal examples spanning decades of experimentation and experience, the book illuminates how States and stakeholders are seeking innovative ways to integrate environmental and social considerations into trade and investment agreements. Introducing a ground-breaking systematic approach, the volume considers how, through this integration, international trade and investment law can contribute to the achievement of the world's Sustainable Development Goals.

This book critically examines the extension of EU environmental legislation beyond EU borders through measures that determine access to the single market on the basis of processes that take place in third countries. It makes a timely contribution to political debates about the relations between EU and non-EU countries, and the Union's role in the global governance of environmental policy, where it has been considered a global leader. The book aims to identify and explain the emerging legal phenomenon of internal environmental measures with extraterritorial implications as an important manifestation of EU global regulatory power, and assesses the extraterritorial reach of EU environmental law from a legitimacy perspective. It examines mechanisms that can bolster its legitimacy, focusing on the legal orders of the EU and the World Trade Organization, which are key legal fora for controlling the EU's global regulatory power.

This book concerns the developments in the field of e-waste management with a particular focus on urban mining, sustainability, and circular economy aspects. It explains e-waste recycling technologies, supply chain aspects, and e-waste disposal in IT industries, including health and environmental effects of e-waste recycling processes, and associated issues, challenges, and solutions. Further, it describes the economic potential of resource recovery from e-waste. Features: Covers recent developments in e-waste management Explores technological advances, such as nanotech from e-waste, MREW, fungal biotech, and so forth Reviews electronic component recycling aspects Discusses the implementation of circular economy in the e-waste sector Includes urban mining and sustainability aspects of e-waste This book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in environmental engineering, waste management, urban mining, circular economy, waste processing, electronics, and telecommunication engineering, electrical and electronics engineering, and chemical engineering.

This book presents a broad overview of the many intersections between health and the environment that lie at the basis of the most crucial environmental health issues, focusing on the responses provided by international and EU law. Consistent with the One Health approach and moving from the relevant international and EU legal frameworks, the book addresses some of the most important issues of environmental health including the traditional, such as pollution of air, water and soil and related food safety issues, as well as new and emerging challenges, like those linked to climate change, antimicrobial resistance and electromagnetic fields. Applying an intersectoral and interdisciplinary approach, it also investigates other branches of international and EU law including human rights law, investment law, trade law, energy law and disaster law. The work also discusses ethics and intergenerational equity. Ultimately, the book assesses the degree of effectiveness of the international and EU normative framework, and the extent to which the relevant legal instruments contribute to the protection of public health from major environmental hazards. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and policy makers working in the areas of Environmental Health law, Global Health law, International law and EU law.