摘要：This paper explores several themes in the relationship between trade liberalization and environmental protection. In recent years, this relationship has become both more controversial and more important. We attempt to build on some ideas that were examined at a workshop of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium in Toronto in 1995 (Bredahl et al., eds. 1996) and at the Third Agricultural and Food Policy Systems Information Workshop in Tucson in March 1997 (Loyns et al., eds. 1997). In order to set the context of what follows, we discuss the emerging consensus on the environmental effects of agricultural trade liberalization under both the Uruguay Round Agreement (URA) and under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and we examine the available evidence on the potential effects of domestic environmental regulations on competitiveness and ultimately on trade in agricultural commodities. We then turn our attention to some conceptual and practical issues that will need to be resolved before much more progress can be made in the integration of trade and environmental policies. The general focus of our discussion is on the crop and livestock industries of North American agriculture, but many of the issues that we discuss transcend these sectoral or geographic boundaries.
