Environmental requirements and market access : reflections from South Asia

With progressive liberalisation of quanti tative restrictions and tariff barriers following multilateral trade negotia tions in WTO, environmental standards have emerged as significant trade barriers for develop ing countries' exports. These standards include food safety regulations, labelling requirements, quality and compositional standards and are often not uniform across countries. WTO Agreements on Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary measures (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) aim to ensure that such standards do not cause adverse impacts on trade. However, the developed coun tries have made use of flexibilities in the WTO agreements and have imposed stringent environ mental norms and standards that primarily act as barriers to the exports from developing countries and also impose large compliance costs that eventually impinge on competitiveness of their exports.

In Environmental Requirements and Market Access, leading experts examine the incidence of environ mental requirements in the North and their impact on market access for Southern products especially those from South Asia. The book deals with various dimensions of such environmental and health related standards and their impact on South Asian trade in terms of their prohibitive effect, discriminatory impact and high compliance costs. The volume concludes with an agenda of action points for governments, business houses and international agencies to address the challenge.