Environmental Management: Principles and practice

BOX 5.3  Clash between free trade and environmental management:
the yellow-fin tuna case
From 1972 the USA had restrictions on its own tuna fishing. Between 1988
and 1991 conflict arose because America felt the Mexicans were using purse-
sein netting techniques that killed marine mammals and other wildlife. In 1992
the USA enacted the International Dolphin Conservation Act, which prohibited
the import of fish or fish products from countries which were deemed to have
inadequate measures for protecting marine mammals.
The 1992 Act led the USA to place an embargo on imports of Mexican
canned yellow-fin tuna. Mexico complained (before the Act was passed) in
1991 that it would violate free trade rules. GATT found in favour of Mexico
(the ban being a violation of its Article XI) (Anderson and Blackhurst, 1992;
Charnovitz, 1993; Musgrave, 1993).
Similar problems have been caused by the USA’s (1987) Driftnet
Enforcement Act and (1992) Wild Bird Conservation Act. Problems with the
former are continuing at the time of writing. The difficulty is deciding whether
this sort of restriction is justified under free trade rules.
Use of Pesticides, and by 1990 about 100 countries were signatories. The FAO and
WHO set up the Codex Alimentarius Commission to establish food standards,
including acceptable pesticide levels, and this annually publishes standards. Under
GATT the Codex seems likely to have increased powers. However, it has been argued
that Codex decisions are determined too much by developed countries and MNCs or
TNCs (Avery et al., 1993). Any nation that already has, or is setting standards higher
than the Codex may well be deemed to be putting up trade barriers and could suffer
sanctions (for a recent study of WTO agreements and the environment, focusing on
how to solve the difficulties, see Cameron and Fijalkowski, 1998).
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