Adam Noel Darling Memorial Scholarship Fund Submission
Opinion Editorial/or the Seattle Times:

International Trade Should Include Environmental Services

By Tiffini Banks
Economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C.


(831)649-4630
Tiffim.Banks(S).miis.edu

Likewise, the critical links between trade and the environment are increasingly recognized by bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.

Within the WTO, established in 1994, the preamble emphasizes the need to ensure that efforts to achieve the economic and social objectives of the WTO are consistent with efforts to protect and preserve the environment.

The WTO Committee on Trade and Environment was established to examine the relationship between trade and environmental measures, in order to promote sustainable development.

To date, the WTO Agreements on sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, agriculture, subsidies and countervailing measures, trade in services, and trade in intellectual property all contain environmental provisions.

This does not mean that the WTO will become and environmental agency, that it will set environmental standards, or that it will develop global policies on the environment. WTO policy coordination is limited to those trade related aspects of environmental policies that may result in significant trade effects for WTO member countries.

This coordination can ensure that free trade and environmental policies work together in tandem to achieve social benefit, economic growth, and environmental quality. This is true on several fronts:

First, through the adjustment of market prices and reallocation of resources, free trade promotes dynamic gains to an economy and can contribute to an expansion of economic growth.

(5) The WTO should identify areas of potential "win-win" situations wherein trade liberalization leads to economic and environmental benefits.

To illustrate the magnitude of environmental problems, the World Bank estimates
that 1,000 million people do not have access to clean drinking water; 2,000 billion people
do not have access to sanitation; and 2-3 million children die annually due to diseases from this lack of water and sanitation.

As great as these problems are, the opportunities for the private sector are enormous.

The environmental technologies market is one of the fastest growing worldwide. The global market for envirotech is about $400,000 million, and is projected to reach $600,000 million by the year 2010.

Due to the fact that the market for envirotech in the U.S. is already very mature and growing slowly, the future growth of the U.S. envirotech industry depends heavily on international markets.

Fortunately, there is an increasing demand for environmentally friendlier products worldwide. Surveys in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden found that one-
quarter of the population can be classified as "green" consumers. One-third of Asian exports are now in sectors where environmental requirements are emerging.

To quote President Clinton, expanding the envirotech industry into foreign markets provides U.S. firms a chance to "do well while doing good."

Opening international markets not only to environmental goods, but also to environmental services could translate into a substantial increase in the number of jobs.