International Legal Aspects of Eco-Labelling in the context of North-South division on International Trade Rules*

In the contemporary world, the inter-linkages between trade and environment have become an important contentious issue at various fora in the development discourse. The debate on the ‘trade and environment linkage’ has been dominated by two principal concerns of market access and product competitiveness. In the international politico-economic interface, the debate has centered on the WTO (World Trade Organization) system, which is primarily a trade body but has come under attack from the environmental lobby (and by the developed countries) for ignoring the environmental concerns. Developing countries in particular, do not want WTO to play any role in addressing the environmental concerns as they feel that WTO's in-built provisions on trade sanctions in case of non-compliance (which in environmental context can be protection of dolphins, or sustainable production processes) has the potential of being a tool for arm twisting. In general, the linkage between trade and environment is regarded by them as another form of conditionality (green protectionism), a means to raise protective barriers and deny them market access. Amongst various trade measures for environmental purposes, ‘eco-labelling’ has turned out to be a very effective means for promoting environmental friendly products, but can be a non-tariff barrier to trade. The North accuses the South for eco-dumping and the South accuses the North of pursuing eco-imperialism or green imperialism. At present there are about 22 eco-labelling programs most of which have originated in a developed country and are emerging as a de-jure requirements and may involve additional costs and difficulties.

Developing countries hold that, since they do not have access to adequate resources to adopt patented environmental-friendly technology; the balance is tilted against them. This article analyses the international legal framework applicable to eco-labelling schemes with a view to finding out the difficulties (both procedural and substantive) encountered by the developing countries in adopting and implementing them in their trade policy measures and offers some suggestions to level the playing field in order to root out the legitimate apprehensions (with regard to these schemes) of the developing country partners in the world trade.

*This is the Abstract of my Article published in the Indian Journal of International Law, Vol. 48 (1) 2008, pp. 45-74.