环境贸易措施外文翻译.docVIP

外文翻译 原文 Environmental trade measures Material Source: Environmental Issues Author：Chad P. Bown and Rachel McCulloch I. Introduction What role does the World Trade Organization play in efforts to safeguard the environment? What role it play? Environmental groups and green-leaning governments have come to view the WTO, with its large membership and its relative success in achieving a rules-based international regime, as the prime candidate for international arbiter on environmental issues. However, many proponents of expanded global trade, and especially policy makers in developing countries, are skeptical about an expanded role for the WTO in maintaining environmental standards. They fear that WTO-approved trade sanctions may be used to enforce adherence to environmental norms not necessarily shared by or appropriate for all nations, and that environmental protection may in practice translate into a fresh justification for old-fashioned protectionism. Although the word “environment” itself appears nowhere in the original articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs on Trade, Article XX allows broad exceptions for environmental policies that would otherwise constitute violations of GATT principles: [N]othing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any contracting party of measures . . . necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health . . . [or] . . . relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources. . . . But Article XX also specifies that application of such measures must not constitute “a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade. . . .”Much of the recent controversy over the WTO’s appropriate role in achieving environmental objectives centers on application of Article XX, and thus at least implicitly on the weight that should be given to efficiency gains from