The tension between trade liberalisation and environmental protection has received remarkable attention since the establishment of the WTO. It has been the subject of a wide-ranging debate, and is one of the central themes of the anti-globalisation movement. This book explores that debate. It argues that by focusing on the WTO, the debate has failed to recognise the institutional and discursive complexity in which the trade-environment conflict is embedded. A legal investigation of this nexus requires a framework of inquiry, in which this complexity can be elucidated - a model of global legal pluralism. The first theoretical part of the book (Chapters One and Two) responds to this challenge by developing a pluralistic model, which recognises the trade and environment conflict as the product of multiple dilemmas, constituted and negotiated by a myriad of institutional and discursive networks. As such, this conflict cannot be understood or addressed through one-dimensional models. ...
