Blandford, David --- "Climate Change Policies for Agriculture and WTO Agreements" [2012] ELECD 121; in McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku (eds), "Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement

Editor(s): McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848441163

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Climate Change Policies for Agriculture and WTO Agreements

Author(s): Blandford, David

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

9 Climate change policies for agriculture
and WTO agreements
David Blandford


I. INTRODUCTION
Since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was
drafted in 1947 the policy agenda for international trade has expanded
enormously. The primary concern in the immediate post-war period
was to impose greater discipline on trade policies by promoting
transparency and non-discrimination through the application of tariffs
on the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, and to provide a
framework for negotiated reductions in those tariffs. The trade agenda
expanded during the 1960s when the interests of developing countries
came to greater prominence, culminating in waivers to allow rich
countries to offer tariff preferences to poorer countries. Exceptions
were also made for the reduction in tariffs among members of trading
blocs, such as the European Union (EU), providing that there was non-
discrimination among WTO members outside the bloc (through a
common tariff applied by each country or a common external tariff
applied by all countries). The Uruguay Round agreement of 1994,
establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO), reflected a further
major expansion in the trade agenda by effectively including
agriculture under GATT disciplines for the first time through a specific
Agreement on Agriculture (the AoA). The provisions of a number of
other Uruguay Round agreements are also of significance for the
sector. These include those on sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures
(SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT), and a strengthened
approach to subsidies through the Agreement on Subsidies and
Countervailing Measures (SCM). A ...