The World Trade Organization and Climate Change

Abstract

Since its founding in 1995, the World Trade Organization has had a great impact on the banana trade, which suggests that it might affect the trade of other commodities as well. The WTO is a reflection of the neoliberal paradigm driving the world economy. Its creation was a response to the fourteen-fold increase in the volume of global trade between 1948 and 1994, an increase that proved beyond the ability of the earlier GATT to address. Technological advances in transportation, communications, and production systems contributed to the growth of trade and to its restructuring. According to Anderson (2000, 25), the