Biodiversity Program Current Activities: Conservation and Trade

Linkages between trade policy and the conservation or loss of biological resources proliferate in an increasingly global marketplace.  International trade policies have a significant impact on the earth's biodiversity and biological resources.  They can undermine national and international conservation laws and policies.  Trade liberalization can also increase exploitation of natural resources and exacerbate the associated negative impacts on biodiversity.   CIEL seeks to reform trade rules so that they support rather than impede conservation and sustainable use.  We also seek to ensure that trade liberalization is paralleled and balanced by stronger frameworks for conservation and sustainable use of biological resources affected by trade.   

In November 1999, CIEL filed a citizen's submission to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC).  The CEC was set up by the United States, Canada and Mexico under NAFTA's environmental side agreement to investigate failures of environmental law enforcement that might result from the pressures of free trade.  CIEL's petition complained that the United States had failed to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act against logging companies.   It was supported by 8 other groups from Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.  

On December 23, 1999, the CEC asked the U.S. for a response, noting that CIEL's submission was a "particularly strong candidate" for consideration.  While the CEC cannot issue a binding decision, it could conduct an investigation if the NAFTA countries allow it to go forward.   The CEC has registered the petition and the full text is available on the CEC web site.

Linkages between trade and biodiversity were recently surveyed in an IUCN publication authored by CIEL attorney David Downes, Integrating Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Rules of the WTO (please contact Tina Winqvist with IUCN for ordering information). 

Linkages between trade and fisheries are significant:  some 40% of world fishing production moves in international trade, while the world's fisheries are in crisis, depleted by commercial overfishing and unsustainable fishing practices.  In cooperation with Greenpeace, CIEL prepared recommendations on how to reconcile international trade rules with fisheries conservation, Fisheries Conservation and Trade Rules:  Ensuring that Trade Law Promotes Sustainable Fisheries, for release at the WTO ministerial conference in Geneva in 1998.  

Trade also has significant implications for forests.  In their 1999 report Tree Trade, the World Resources Institute and CIEL reviewed these implications and offered recommendations for reforming trade law itself as well as strengthening the framework of forest protection laws and policies needed alongside trade liberalization.  Previously, in 1997, CIEL published a study on the potential impact of trade policy on the use of timber product ecolabeling to encourage sustainable management of forests, Applying Trade Rules to Timber Ecolabeling, and in the same year served as NGO advisor to the US delegation to UN talks on forests.  

For additional information on work relating to trade and conservation, including CIEL's precedent-setting amicus briefs filed with the WTO Dispute Settlement Body in the "Shrimp/Turtle" case,  see the Trade and Environment Program.