In a recent previous post, Joel Trachtman suggests that the recent speech by Pascal Lamy constitutes a "major break" in the trade-environment debate at the WTO. Frankly, I see nothing breaking nor major in this speech. All what Lamy says is that some trade issues negotiated in the Doha Round would incidentally have some positive side effects on environmental issues. For example, less trade distorting subsidies would have as side effects less pressure on resources. In the same vein, lowering tariffs would have as side effects the facilitation of trade in clean technologies.
The real doctrinal shift would be for example to discipline all subsidies (and not only certain limited fisheries subsidies) on the basis also of their "adverse environmental effects". At the moment, only "adverse trade effects" (price suppression, lost market shares, etc...) are the rules of the game in the WTO. Unless the normative monopoly of "adverse trade effects" is challenged in the future, one cannot in my view really speak of a "major break". As for the role of MEAs in the future, it is only a promise depending on the will of Members. The reality, as demonstrated by the Biotech panel and its treatment of the Carthagena Protocol is much less glorious.
First it refused to consider the protocol as an applicable rule of international law in the biotech dispute because not all parties to the dispute were members of the protocol. Second, while not taking position on this issue, it did not exclude the idea that, even if all parties to the biotech dispute were members of the Carthagena protocol, that would not be enough since perhaps ratification by ALL members of the WTO would be necessary! Third, it refused to consider the precaution principle as a customary norm of international law. The only thing that the biotech panel accepted is to "take account" of the carthagena protocol "as context" for interpeting certain terms, exactly what the AB did in Shrimp-Turtle.