Mainstreaming Environment and Development at the World Trade Organization? Fisheries Subsidies, the Politics of Rule-Making, and the Elusive ‘Triple Win’

Abstract

The relationship among trade liberalization, the environment, and socioeconomic development is marked by controversy, though it is well accepted that in practice economic interests often trump environmental concerns and that developing countries incur a range of costs to participate in, and comply with, multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. Politics and power dynamics in the rule-making process in liberalization negotiations are often implicated for generating these outcomes. To improve on this record, and in accordance with the rise in ‘market environmentalism’, World Trade Organization (WTO) members and advocacy groups have turned this rhetoric on its head and pushed for ‘synergy’ in which a single WTO rule to discipline fisheries subsidies at once liberalizes trade, generates an environmental improvement, and supports developing country aspirations—a much fêted ‘triple win’. We sketch the anatomy of the fisheries subsidies negotiations and explore how the triple win is used by blocks of states to justify different political—economic positions. This analysis sheds light on the challenges associated with seeking to use trade for the environment and for development and the dynamics that shape negotiations and the actually existing rules that emerge from the WTO.