In his 31 years as a member of West Virginia University’s agricultural and resource economics faculty, Dale Colyer paid particular scholarly attention to issues of global development and trade. That attention and the research it motivated have coalesced into a new book, Green Trade Agreements, published by MacMillan’s Palgrave imprint.

The book reviews and analyzes the environmental provisions that have become an important characteristic of the growing number of bilateral and regional free trade agreements. This book examines the range of approaches to these environmental provisions, evaluates their effectiveness and suggests potential improvements to the process.

Green Trade Agreements addresses the controversies which arose after the 1991 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade dispute panel ruling against the United States in the tuna-dolphin case, a dispute between the United States and Mexico over limiting imports based on fishing practices,” Colyer explained.

From Colyer’s perspective, the ruling galvanized an already wary public into opposing expansion of free trade.

“Environmentalists and free trade advocates became embroiled in a heated controversy: one side regarded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as enemies of the environment, while the other side regarded applying environmental rules to trade as a death knell to prosperity,” Colyer said. “The subsequent North American Free Trade Agreement represented an attempt to reconcile these differences, incorporating both environmental provisions as well as an environmental side agreement.”

Colyer notes that, since this landmark accord, an increasing number of free trade agreements are including environmental provisions, and the coexisting concerns of environmental protection and economic development still spark fierce debate.

In Green Trade Agreements, Colyer reviews the various types of environmental provisions included in free trade agreements, examining how these are incorporated and analyzing how these provisions work. The effectiveness of specific provisions is assessed, and potential improvements are suggested that could protect the environment without restricting trade.

“I started work on the general topic shortly after my retirement at the end of 2001,” Colyer said, noting that “it was a way to occupy my time and continue with research which to me has always been very satisfying.”

The book’s topic was an outgrowth of previous research he’d conducted on international trade, especially in poultry, and of some research on NAFTA.

“During the subsequent years I published a number of articles and gave papers at several professional meetings as well as at the World Bank,” Colyer said. “These papers covered essentially the same material as the book, but short papers couldn’t adequately cover the issues in the necessary depth. Thus, it seemed that writing a book was a natural way to address the issues.”

In 1970, Colyer joined WVU’s agricultural and resource economics program as director of the Division of Resource Management in what is now the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design. During his tenure at WVU, he earned the institution’s highest research honor, being named a Benedum Distinguished Scholar. Upon his retirement in 2002, he was granted the title of Emeritus Professor and is still a regular visitor to Division offices in the Agricultural Sciences Building on WVU’s Evansdale Campus.

Prior to joining WVU’s faculty, he had served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universidad del Litoral in Rosario, Argentina. After completing a period of service as division director, Colyer worked as an agricultural economist and policy analyst for the United States Agency for International Development in Quito, Ecuador. He has also worked as an economic consultant in Latin America and Africa.

-WVU-

dw/09/30/11

CONTACT: David Welsh; Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
304-293-2394; dwelsh@wvu.edu

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