Sean Shun Ming Yau (LLB 2016)
Jindal Global Law Review
Published online: July 2025
Abstract: The question how to best effectuate natural resources management is predetermined by the limits to which a state retains its sovereign discretion to act in an equilibrium range bounded by legal norms superimposed by various fields of international law. While international environmental law seeks to procure sustainable, equitable, and responsible exploitation, distribution, and uses of natural resources in a national jurisdiction, WTO law points to the opposite direction. Despite its aspiration to attain sustainable trade at its inception, the law and practice of the WTO soon exposed various points of friction which are counterintuitive, at times contradictory, to the institutional philosophy advancing the co-existence of trade liberalisation and ‘optimal use of the world’s resources’ as expressed in the preambular text of its constitutional instrument. The constitutional failure to balance the dual-objectives transpires in the ambivalence of its Members to balance obligations arising from the two fields of law. This article argues that WTO law establishes certain structural relationships of favouritism prioritising trade freedom, which either fundamentally contradicts, excludes, or leaves very little room for considerations of international environmental law, or otherwise indirectly debilitates a Member’s regulatory autonomy to respect the same. In consequence, state behaviour has been largely uniformised by the homogeneity of trade rules, with a view to creating a ‘borderless’ global economy where natural resources are traded freely. Such surrenders natural resources management to the invisible hands of market conditions prone to unsustainable exploitation and inequitable distribution.
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