International Trade and the Protection of the Environment

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.

Simon Baughen, a former practitioner in shipping law, is a reader in law at the University of Bristol where he has worked since 1989. He is the author of Shipping Law. His research areas are: trade, investment and environmental protection; maritime law; trusts and equity.