Relationship Between the Legal Regimes of the World Trade Organization and Multilateral Agreements on the Protection of Natural Resources

This graduate paper is aimed at identifying relationship between the legal regimes of the World Trade Organization and multilateral agreements on the protection of natural resources and considering possible ways of compatibility of the regimes. The main objectives of the graduate paper are: to analyze definitions of the term “natural resources” in international agreements and international law doctrine; to examine rules of international law, the international legal doctrine and practice of international courts and tribunals on the issue of the legal regime and principles governing the protection of natural resources; to examine the provisions of multilateral agreements in WTO law in the field of the protection of natural resources; to examine practice of the WTO DSB ; to analyze the provisions of the main multilateral environmental agreements that are aimed at the protection of natural resources and, at the same time, establish restrictions in international trade. The methodology of the research is based on the dialectical method. Along with the dialectical method were used: historical, comparative legal, analytical, dogmatic-legal and logical methods. The use of these methods contributed to the achievement of the aim and the objectives of the graduate paper. From the research, the following conclusions were drawn: firstly, nowadays there is no unified definition of the term “natural resources” in international law; secondly, the legal regime of natural resources is based on principles of general international public law and principles of international environmental law, and in the context of the theme of the graduate paper the legal regime of natural resources is also based on the Marrakesh Agreement, the Doha Ministerial Declaration and the work program of CTE and CTE documents; thirdly, the analysis in the second chapter of the graduate paper of the main WTO multilateral agreements showed a high level of interest of WTO members in the issue of maintaining the balance between the development of international trade and the preservation of natural resources, each of the WTO agreements reviewed in the present work (GATT, GATS, TRIPS, SPS Agreement, TBT) contains rules that are aimed at protection of natural resources; fourthly, all studied multilateral environmental agreements to some extent give states the right to adopt restrictive trade measures in order to preserve biodiversity, climate and other natural resources, so states can use both non-tariff trade restriction measures and tariff measures to protect natural resources.