A common finding in the international trade literature is that economic integration leads to export diversification. By documenting a positive link between joining the European Economic and Monetary Union and bilateral export concentration, the leading essay shows that this is not always the case. Using a panel data approach, I find that exports between the Eurozone members are on average more concentrated than those among countries which do not share the euro. Central to this outcome is that some economic integration agreements, such as the European Economic and Monetary Union, may lead to a drop in not only trade but horizontal FDI costs as well. Theoretically, the results can be explained by the substitutability between exporting and horizontal FDI within a two-sector, two-firm type model which allows for sectoral trade cost heterogeneity. Since the early 1970s, a series of international environmental agreements (IEAs) were signed, ratified, and enforced throughout the developed and developing nations. Regarding IEAs as potential barriers to trade, the second essay seeks to quantify their impact on industry-level exports by using a gravity regression approach. I proceed by classifying industries into dirty and clean based on their average emission intensities and find that the ratification of IEAs is associated with a significant reduction in export flows. The decrease is more pronounced for industries which are classified as dirty or for those which are characterized by high emission intensities per unit of output. Additionally, climate change IEAs bring about a compositional shift towards cleaner exports. Lastly, climate change and acid rain IEAs are found to engender leakage effects. No such evidence is recovered for ozone depletion accords. The third essay adds to the literature on the Kyoto protocol and the carbon content of bilateral trade. It does so by analyzing the effect of ratifying the Kyoto protocol on exports, the carbon dioxide (CO2) intensity of exports, and the CO2 emissions embodied in exports within a novel dataset of 149 countries. For parties that took on binding emission caps, the ratification of Kyoto protocol leads to (i) lower CO2 emissions embodied in exports, (ii) lower CO2 emission intensities, but (iii) higher overall exports. For the same group of countries, a year-by-year analysis underlines a permanent decline in both the CO2 emission intensity and the CO2 content of their exports. Furthermore, the analysis also points out to a short-run decline in exports. In the long run, however, exports are estimated to recover. Also, the commitment type or whether a party was designated as a transition economy at the time of ratification are found to shape the above three outcomes.

The object of this thesis is Voluntary tools for the protection of the environment. Voluntary environmental tools, also known as voluntary instruments or approaches, are a set of activities primarily used by business entities to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Their hallmarks are voluntary, ie. Private entity make voluntary decision if voluntary instrument applies or not, and their use is not mandatory in any legislative provisions stipulated, and prevention, ie. applied mainly as a preventive tools used to eliminate the negative effects of business activities on the environment. Voluntary tools are one of the tools of environmental policy. Despite their disparate developments, we can say that their use has expanded since the 90 of the 20 century. in connection with a new environmental strategy that seeks to prevent negative impacts on the environment by trying to cause these effects to actively seek out and eliminate (prevention strategies). In the first part I have dealt with historical and institutional development of voluntary instruments as a whole. Watching the development in the context of international, European and national developments. In the second part, I defined a voluntary instrument, and then classified them into two main groups according to the independence of...

Environmental protection and the World Trade Organization Klára Šmídlová Abstract The theme of this diploma thesis is the relationship of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the environmental protection. In its three chapters, this paper carries out an analysis of the historical aspects of this relationship and also of the questions, which are being solved in the present. The first chapter outlines the evolution of the relationship between the international trade and the environmental protection since 1947 when the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was concluded. The second part of the paper focuses on the analysis of the provisions of the particular WTO agreements, which approach the issue of the environmental protection in different ways. The case law established by the WTO bodies during solving of the disputes between the member states is especially emphasised in analysis of the provisions of the WTO agreements. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to the research of the relationship between the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements, above all those making use of the trade measures to achieve their goals.

The thesis contains three chapters on environmental and natural resource economics and focuses on situations where agents receive private or public information. The first chapter analyses the problem of transboundary fisheries, where harvesting countries behave non-cooperatively. In addition to biological uncertainty, countries may face strategic uncertainty. A country that receives negative assessments about the current level of the fish stock, may become “pessimistic” about the assessment of the other harvesting country, which can ignite “panic-based” overfishing. In such a coordination problem, multiplicity of equilibria is a generic characteristic of the solution. Both strategic uncertainty and equilibrium selection, relatively, have been given less attention in the theoretical literature of common-property natural resources. In this model, in the limit as the harvesting countries observe more and more precise information, rationality ensures the unique “global game” equilibrium, a la Carlsson and van Damme (1993). The improved predictive power of the model helps a potential intergovernmental manager of the stock understand the threshold behaviour of harvesting countries. The global game threshold coincides with the risk-dominance threshold of a precise information model, as if there was no strategic uncertainty, and implies that the countries select the corresponding risk-dominant action for any level of assessment of the stock. Gaining from the risk-dominance equivalence, I derive policy suggestions for the overfishing cost and the property rights in common-property fisheries. The second chapter develops a theoretical framework to examine the role of public information in dynamic self-enforcing international environmental agreements (IEAs) on climate change. The countries choose self-enforcing emission abatement strategies in an infinite-horizon repeated game. In a stochastic model, where the social cost of greenhouse gasses (GHG) is a random variable, a central authority, as an information sender, can control release of information about the unknown state to the countries. In the literature on stochastic IEAs, it is shown that comparison of different scenarios of learning by the countries, depends on ex-ante difference of true social cost of GHG from the prior belief of countries. Here, I try to understand, in a signalling game between the informed sender and the countries, whether the no-learning or imperfect-learning scenarios, can be an equilibrium outcome. It is shown that the equilibrium strategy of the sender, who is constrained to a specific randomisation device and tries to induce an incentive-compatible abatement level which is Pareto superior, leads to full learning of social cost of GHG of symmetric and asymmetric countries. Finally, in the third chapter, I again examine a setting, where a central authority, as an information sender, conducts research on the true social cost of climate change, and releases information to the countries. However, in this chapter, instead of restricting the sender to a specific signalling structure, the sender, who has commitment power, by designing an information mechanism (a set of signals and a probability distribution over them), maximises his payoff, which depends on the mitigation action of countries and the social cost of green-house gases(GHG). The countries, given the information policy (the probability distribution over signals) and the public signal, update their beliefs about the social cost of GHG and take a mitigation action. I derive the optimal information mechanism from the general set of public information mechanisms, in coalition formation games. I show that the coalition size, as a function of beliefs, is an endogenous variable, induced by the information sender. If the sender maximises the expected payoff of either of non-signatories or signatories of the climate treaty, then full revelation is the optimal information policy, while if the sender attempts to reduce the global level of GHG, then optimal information policy leads to imperfect disclosure of the social cost. Furthermore, given any of the specifications of the sender’s payoff, the optimal information policy leads to the socially optimal mitigation and membership outcomes.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a planning process used to predict, assess, mitigate, and monitor the potential environmental and social impacts that may be associated with a proposed development project. Essential to the efficacy of EIA is follow-up - a post-decision process that attempts to understand EIA outcomes and provides feedback on project development and learning processes to improve environmental management practices. While considerable literature on follow-up related themes exists, the actual implementation and engagement of all stakeholders involved with follow-up in post-consent decision stages lacks or is not done well. That being said, in northern Canada, and in the mining sector in general, much of this post-decision activity is occurring under a new institutional arrangement: privatized community-industry Environmental Agreements and associated community-based monitoring programs. Based on a case study of follow-up in northern Saskatchewans uranium mining industry, this thesis examines both the institutional development of EIA follow-up and the role and contribution of community-based Environmental Agreements to EIA follow-up and impact management practices. This thesis adopted a manuscript-style format; both utilized a combined methodology of document review and semi-structured interviews. The first manuscript focuses on the institutional development of follow-up in the northern Saskatchewan uranium mining industry, giving context to the current situation. Results demonstrate that follow-up in Saskatchewans uranium industry has transformed and is characterized by four themes ranging from little or no follow-up to a new system that now includes a participatory yet privatized process based on privatized agreements. Results suggest that follow-up has evolved to a current emphasis on environmental management incorporating a community-centric approach, recognition of socioeconomic issues in monitoring programs, and an increased community and industry presence in follow-up and monitoring activities. The second manuscript examines the nature and scope of the northern Saskatchewan uranium industrys Environmental Agreement and its potential role in EIA follow-up. Results indicate that although privatized Environmental Agreements and community-led monitoring programs complement and supplement formal EIA follow-up processes and contribute to environmental management practices, they do not have the capacity to replace EIA follow-up. Results from this thesis advance current knowledge and understanding of the evolution of EIA follow-up and the current role and contribution of privatized agreements to post-decision follow-up and impact management practices.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a planning process used to predict, assess, mitigate, and monitor the potential environmental and social impacts that may be associated with a proposed development project. Essential to the efficacy of EIA is follow-up - a post-decision process that attempts to understand EIA outcomes and provides feedback on project development and learning processes to improve environmental management practices. While considerable literature on follow-up related themes exists, the actual implementation and engagement of all stakeholders involved with follow-up in post-consent decision stages lacks or is not done well. That being said, in northern Canada, and in the mining sector in general, much of this post-decision activity is occurring under a new institutional arrangement: privatized community-industry Environmental Agreements and associated community-based monitoring programs. Based on a case study of follow-up in northern Saskatchewans uranium mining industry, this thesis examines both the institutional development of EIA follow-up and the role and contribution of community-based Environmental Agreements to EIA follow-up and impact management practices. This thesis adopted a manuscript-style format; both utilized a combined methodology of document review and semi-structured interviews. The first manuscript focuses on the institutional development of follow-up in the northern Saskatchewan uranium mining industry, giving context to the current situation. Results demonstrate that follow-up in Saskatchewans uranium industry has transformed and is characterized by four themes ranging from little or no follow-up to a new system that now includes a participatory yet privatized process based on privatized agreements. Results suggest that follow-up has evolved to a current emphasis on environmental management incorporating a community-centric approach, recognition of socioeconomic issues in monitoring programs, and an increased community and industry presence in follow-up and monitoring activities. The second manuscript examines the nature and scope of the northern Saskatchewan uranium industrys Environmental Agreement and its potential role in EIA follow-up. Results indicate that although privatized Environmental Agreements and community-led monitoring programs complement and supplement formal EIA follow-up processes and contribute to environmental management practices, they do not have the capacity to replace EIA follow-up. Results from this thesis advance current knowledge and understanding of the evolution of EIA follow-up and the current role and contribution of privatized agreements to post-decision follow-up and impact management practices.

A presente dissertação tem por finalidade analisar a compatibilidade das medidas restritivas comerciais, constantes em diversos tratados multilaterais ambientais, com as normas que compõem um sistema que prevê o multilateralismo, a abertura e a equidade nas relações comerciais. Trata-se de um estudo que, a partir da análise de tratados internacionais, da jurisprudência e da revisão bibliográfica existente na área do comércio e meio ambiente, investiga os aspectos da fragmentação do direito internacional, reconhecendo a necessidade de coordenação entre os subsistemas normativos. Para tanto, serão percorridas teorias a respeito da potencialidade de conflito entre diferentes normas e jurisdições competentes, demonstrando que, através de métodos interpretativos e do recurso a princípios gerais do direito internacional, é possível encontrar a forma apropriada para harmonizá-los. Nesse espectro, ganha importância o exame do artigo XX do GATT 1994 e dos casos que ressaltam a aplicação desta norma que fornece exceções ao regime comercial, permitindo a execução de políticas governamentais que atendam à proteção dos recursos naturais. A toda evidência, conclui-se que as disposições dos tratados ambientais e comerciais interagem no cenário jurídico internacional, denunciando que o sistema de livre-comércio inclina-se a adaptar a agenda ambiental entre as suas preocupações, respondendo ao desafio de promover o equilíbrio entre as normas do direito internacional e a coerência entre esses diversos tratados. / The following dissertation aims to analyze the compatibility of trade restrictive measures introduced in various multilateral environmental agreements with trade rules, guided by open, non-discriminatory, equitable and predictable multilateral trading relations. This study relies on the agreements examination, case and literature review in the trade and environment area, researching aspects of the fragmentation of international law that recognize the need for coordination between normative self-contained regimes. Likewise, the thesis goes through relevant theories regarding the potential conflict between different norms and competent jurisdictions, demonstrating that it is possible to find the proper way to harmonize them by interpretive methods and general principles of international law. Furthermore, it is required to explore the role introduced under article XX of the GATT 1994 and the jurisprudence that highlight the application of this rule, which provides exceptions to the trade regime, allowing the enforcement of government policies that address the protection of natural resources. Thereby, this study concludes that the provisions of the multilateral environmental and trade treaties interact in the international legal arena, emphasizing that the free trade system is inclined to adapt the environmental agenda among their concerns, responding to the challenge of promoting the balance between the norms of international law and coherence between these various treaties.

A presente dissertação tem por finalidade analisar a compatibilidade das medidas restritivas comerciais, constantes em diversos tratados multilaterais ambientais, com as normas que compõem um sistema que prevê o multilateralismo, a abertura e a equidade nas relações comerciais. Trata-se de um estudo que, a partir da análise de tratados internacionais, da jurisprudência e da revisão bibliográfica existente na área do comércio e meio ambiente, investiga os aspectos da fragmentação do direito internacional, reconhecendo a necessidade de coordenação entre os subsistemas normativos. Para tanto, serão percorridas teorias a respeito da potencialidade de conflito entre diferentes normas e jurisdições competentes, demonstrando que, através de métodos interpretativos e do recurso a princípios gerais do direito internacional, é possível encontrar a forma apropriada para harmonizá-los. Nesse espectro, ganha importância o exame do artigo XX do GATT 1994 e dos casos que ressaltam a aplicação desta norma que fornece exceções ao regime comercial, permitindo a execução de políticas governamentais que atendam à proteção dos recursos naturais. A toda evidência, conclui-se que as disposições dos tratados ambientais e comerciais interagem no cenário jurídico internacional, denunciando que o sistema de livre-comércio inclina-se a adaptar a agenda ambiental entre as suas preocupações, respondendo ao desafio de promover o equilíbrio entre as normas do direito internacional e a coerência entre esses diversos tratados. / The following dissertation aims to analyze the compatibility of trade restrictive measures introduced in various multilateral environmental agreements with trade rules, guided by open, non-discriminatory, equitable and predictable multilateral trading relations. This study relies on the agreements examination, case and literature review in the trade and environment area, researching aspects of the fragmentation of international law that recognize the need for coordination between normative self-contained regimes. Likewise, the thesis goes through relevant theories regarding the potential conflict between different norms and competent jurisdictions, demonstrating that it is possible to find the proper way to harmonize them by interpretive methods and general principles of international law. Furthermore, it is required to explore the role introduced under article XX of the GATT 1994 and the jurisprudence that highlight the application of this rule, which provides exceptions to the trade regime, allowing the enforcement of government policies that address the protection of natural resources. Thereby, this study concludes that the provisions of the multilateral environmental and trade treaties interact in the international legal arena, emphasizing that the free trade system is inclined to adapt the environmental agenda among their concerns, responding to the challenge of promoting the balance between the norms of international law and coherence between these various treaties.

A presente dissertação tem por finalidade analisar a compatibilidade das medidas restritivas comerciais, constantes em diversos tratados multilaterais ambientais, com as normas que compõem um sistema que prevê o multilateralismo, a abertura e a equidade nas relações comerciais. Trata-se de um estudo que, a partir da análise de tratados internacionais, da jurisprudência e da revisão bibliográfica existente na área do comércio e meio ambiente, investiga os aspectos da fragmentação do direito internacional, reconhecendo a necessidade de coordenação entre os subsistemas normativos. Para tanto, serão percorridas teorias a respeito da potencialidade de conflito entre diferentes normas e jurisdições competentes, demonstrando que, através de métodos interpretativos e do recurso a princípios gerais do direito internacional, é possível encontrar a forma apropriada para harmonizá-los. Nesse espectro, ganha importância o exame do artigo XX do GATT 1994 e dos casos que ressaltam a aplicação desta norma que fornece exceções ao regime comercial, permitindo a execução de políticas governamentais que atendam à proteção dos recursos naturais. A toda evidência, conclui-se que as disposições dos tratados ambientais e comerciais interagem no cenário jurídico internacional, denunciando que o sistema de livre-comércio inclina-se a adaptar a agenda ambiental entre as suas preocupações, respondendo ao desafio de promover o equilíbrio entre as normas do direito internacional e a coerência entre esses diversos tratados. / The following dissertation aims to analyze the compatibility of trade restrictive measures introduced in various multilateral environmental agreements with trade rules, guided by open, non-discriminatory, equitable and predictable multilateral trading relations. This study relies on the agreements examination, case and literature review in the trade and environment area, researching aspects of the fragmentation of international law that recognize the need for coordination between normative self-contained regimes. Likewise, the thesis goes through relevant theories regarding the potential conflict between different norms and competent jurisdictions, demonstrating that it is possible to find the proper way to harmonize them by interpretive methods and general principles of international law. Furthermore, it is required to explore the role introduced under article XX of the GATT 1994 and the jurisprudence that highlight the application of this rule, which provides exceptions to the trade regime, allowing the enforcement of government policies that address the protection of natural resources. Thereby, this study concludes that the provisions of the multilateral environmental and trade treaties interact in the international legal arena, emphasizing that the free trade system is inclined to adapt the environmental agenda among their concerns, responding to the challenge of promoting the balance between the norms of international law and coherence between these various treaties.

This diploma thesis deals with global environmental agreements and their effectiveness. Its aim is to disclose the causes of success of some agreements and, on the contrary, the motives of failure of other agreements. In the theoretical part, the specialities of the environmental problems are illustrated, followed by the introduction to the international environmental law and agreements. In the practical part, two well-known international agreements concerned with atmosphere are compared. They deal with similar problem, but they achieved very different results. The objective of step-by-step comparison of diverse aspects of both agreements is to discover what factors caused the great success of the Montreal Protocol in protecting the ozone layer and why the similarly conceived Kyoto Protocol failed in the combat against climate change. Last chapter concludes this comparison and defines key characteristics which are essential for the effectiveness of the global environmental agreements.