ABSTRACT
The Marrakesh Agreement,1 the birthplace of the World Trade Organization (WTO), begins with a clear message on the environment. The very first paragraph in the Preamble of this agreement lists its objectives, including ‘raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services’.2 This paragraph continues with how to achieve these goals by ‘allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development’.3 Thus, the WTO highlights that the aims of upholding an open trading system and acting to protect the environment should be mutually supportive rather than contradictory.
