Greening Up: The Effects of Environmental Standards in EU and US Trade Agreements

Bastiaens, Ida and Postnikov, Evgeny (2015) Greening Up: The Effects of Environmental Standards in EU and US Trade Agreements. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

We examine the effectiveness of environmental provisions in North-South preferential trade agreements (PTAs) focusing on their important design feature – different enforcement mechanisms. These mechanisms vary significantly across PTAs signed by the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). We argue that both US and EU PTAs with environmental provisions will be effective in instigating environmental policy change in partner countries, although the timing of the effect will vary significantly. We predict that environmental reform in US PTA partner countries will occur during the negotiation process due to a fear of sanctions, while similar reform in EU PTA partners will happen during agreement implementation as a result of the EU’s approach emphasizing policy dialogue. However, we also argue that the success of these provisions in North-South PTAs across developing countries will depend on the strength of civil society. Specifically, we expect that EU PTAs will be effective only in countries with strong institutional structures supporting civil society learning, while the sanctions approach in US PTAs ensures effective environmental reform even in partners with weak civil societies. We test our hypotheses using statistical estimations of EU and US PTAs with environmental provisions on countries’ environmental policy reform measured by Yale University’s index of environmental protection and the signing of multilateral environmental treaties.

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