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Tensions between economic interests and environmental protection have assumed crisis proportions in awareness at every level of society. In particular, the World Trade Organization has become entangled in controversies related to legitimacy, democracy, environmental protection, and fragmentation of international law, fuelling a contentious debate on the use (or abuse) of environmental norms at the WTO. To a greater degree than any comparable treatment, this book focuses on the role of the WTO dispute settlement system in addressing trade-environment conflicts. Highlighting the ways in which environmental issues challenge the legitimacy of WTO jurisprudence, it considers such relevant core issues as the following:

• challenges posed to the WTO by so-called ‘linkage’ issues, such as environmental protection, labour, and investment;
• to what extent the WTO can apply rules of international law (e.g., environmental ones) that are not contained in the WTO agreements; and
• concerns over the Dispute Settlement System’s lack of democratic accountability in matters of great public interest.

"Overall, this book would be of special interest and importance to lawyers practicing international trade and environmental law, governmental officials dealing with trade and environmental policy, as well as academics and students. It provide readers with valuable insights into the relations between the WTO dispute settlement system and international law in its present highly specialized and fragmented state."

by Dmytro Galagan in Association of International Arbitration Newsletter, November 2012