자유무역협정의 환경친화성 제고방안

Abstract

The environmental impact induced by free trade between Korea and Japan Since the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 endorsed the importance of mutual supportiveness between environmental protection and promotion of sustainable development under the open and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system, the environmental impacts of trade liberalization have become a theme of heated debate at global, regional and national level. In understanding overall linkage between trade and environment, we need to recognize that trade is not the major factor which causes the environmental degradation. The relation between trade and environment depends on the specialization structure and the inter-industrial difference in induced environmental impacts from production. It is generally accepted that, without appropriate environmental policy intervention, the economic growth driven by trade liberalization may speed up the environmental degradation. But in the long run, international trade could contribute to the environmental protection by facilitating the worldwide diffusion of environment-friendly technologies and goods. The WTO Annual Report 2003 observed that most WTO members are now party to at least one regional free trade agreement and many to several. And the upward surge in regional trade agreements was most strongly felt in the Asia Pacific region, where countries long in favor of multilateral-only liberalization have whole-heartedly embraced the regional option. Japan, with the entry of its free trade agreement with Singapore in November 2002, became the latest regional trade agreement convert among the WTO members. And Korea, having signed a free trade agreement with Chile, follows Japan. The free trade agreement between Korea and Chile is under ratification process in Korea. Having concluded the Japan-Singapore free trade agreement, Japan is working to introduce a kind of environmental review process in its free trade agreement policy. Japanese Ministry of Environment constructed a working group with some experts in academia to examine the possibility of introducing the environmental impact assessment for trade liberalization under the free trade agreement. Also, Korea takes a similar approach in its environmental review process on free trade agreement policy. From the trade and environment linkage point of view, a quantitative approach to the environmental impact of free trade agreement provides decision-makers with more helpful policy reference than a qualitative analysis. This study analyzed the air pollution impact in Korea induced by trade liberalization between Korea and Japan. A standard multi-region CGE model based on GTAP data base Ver. 5.0 and Korean air pollution inventories in 1998 was used to give a quantitative feature of trade and environment linkage in Korea. The simulation result shows that the aggregated environmental effect depends on the change of specialization structure between pre and post trade liberalization. The inter-industrial difference of emission coefficients and of disposal cost by pollutant type plays a major role in determining the scale of the aggregated environmental effect. The free trade agreement between Korea and Japan reduces the overall air pollution emission by 0.36% but increases the pollution disposal cost slightly by 0.06%. The rate of disposal cost increase is much smaller than that of the real GDP(0.28%). This type of quantitative analysis can provide useful environmental policy guidelines for pursuing "win-win strategy" in trade and environment linkage.