Abstract
　　This paper examines environmental ethics problems involved in the fierce coke trade dispute that broke out between China and the European Union in 2004. It finds that the EU is ethically problematic because it respects its own environment while showing cavalier disregard for China's environment, that China is subject to environmental ethical problems because its economic development is dominated by the "anthropocentric" worldview while giving little consideration to other existences in nature and to social equity, and that the WTO exposes itself to environmental ethical charges because it treats the land as property and allows freer trade to prosper at the expense of biodiversity and the environment. To be ethically sound, the paper also points out, the EU should heighten its sense of international environmental equity and should not have pressured China into exporting more coke than it was willing to; China's "anthropocentric" worldview should be tempered by the "eco-centric" worldview; and the WTO should implement a series of reforms.


1.0 Introduction

　　Since China's entry into the WTO in 2001, export of many products has witnessed a blistering growth. Included in this list is coke, a vital input material for steel production. When China started its coke export in 1985, it sold only 600 tons in a year. This figure slowly climbed up until 2002 when it began to move upward more quickly (Zhang, 2004). In the year of 2003, coke annual export spiked up at an unprecedented pace, ballooning to 13 million tons and accounting for 40 percent of the world's total export (Wang et al, 2004).

　　However, coke production is a dirty industry. In the process of coking, huge amounts of toxic pollutants including SO2, PCB and PAHs will be produced. If improperly disposed of, these pollutants could result in serious damages to the environment and human health. The worst contaminated place in Canada---the Sydney Tar Ponds is just a legacy of over-a-century's coking activities attendant on blossoming steel production at the Sysco Steelworks. In the city of Sydney, soil and underground water are seriously contaminated; human and ecological health is also prejudicially affected. Unfortunately, the unchecked coke production is rehearsing in coke-producing regions in China, especially Shanxi province, with environmental consequences much worse than those in the Sydney.

　　In March 2004, out of consideration of serious environmental degradation, the Chinese government declared a cutback on coke export quota from 12 millions to 9 millions tons a year in a bid to put brakes on coke production. This elicited a fierce backlash from the European Union (EU), however, for the slashed supply would inevitably lead to hikes in coke prices in the international market, thus greatly increasing the cost of steel production in the EU and decreasing the competitiveness of their products. In response, the EU threatened to retaliate if China did not rescind the decision, sparking a trade dispute between China and the EU that had received widespread attention from both the media and the business circle.

　　With China being pressured by the EU to continue exporting an amount of coke not less than its export in the previous year (2003) to the EU, namely 4.5 million tones, some environmental ethical concerns arise. Ought the EU to pressure China if doing so would lead to more damages to China's environment and human health? Should China continue to worship its GDP growth at the expense of other existences in the environment? Is the WTO ethically problematic because freer trade it promotes is increasingly deemed the cause of accelerated environmental damages? What should they do so that they can be ethically sound?

　　These questions are what this paper is concerned about. It is structured as follows. It starts with a brief introduction to the coke production in China and related environmental degradation. This is followed by a review of the coke trade war between China and the EU. It finally explores the environmental ethics implications of the coke trade war for the EU, China and the WTO before a conclusion is made.

2.0 Coke production and its resulting damages to the environment
　　Over a period following China's entry into the WTO, the growth of coke production in China had been dizzying. Within as short a time as one year from 2002 to 2003, the coke production in China jumped by 21 percent, hitting 178 million tons a year (Wang et al, 2004). The increase in coke production in the coal-rich province Shanxi was more profound; its annual coke output in 2003 was 35 percent more than that in 2002, shooting up to 80 million tons (Zhang, 2004).

　　Shangxi is not only the biggest coke producer in China, producing more than 50 percent coke of the country's total, but also the biggest exporter of coke, usually contributing more than 90 percent of the country' coke export. In 2003, of 110 million tons of coke export quota, 100 million tons were from Shanxi (Huang et al, 2004).
Coinciding with this growth is increased environmental damages resulting from the pollution. The province discharged 4.3 percent more SO2 in 2003, compared with one year before, and its coking industry produced more than 40 percent of the provincial total air pollutants and 30 percent of the provincial waste water discharges (Zhang, 2004). Although specific statistics are not available to picture the pollution and its effects on the environment and human health, many indicators point to the ghastly aftermath in this province. Shanxi is considered the most polluted province in China and its capital ---Taiyuan---was listed as one of the twenty most contaminated cities in the world in 2005 (Xinhua, 2005). One report has it that polluted air often obscures the sun and makes the whole sky in many parts of the province gray, with stinking smell lingering in the air without an end (Liu, 2004). The book "China's Water Crisis" has such a portrait of the Feng River, the watershed of which covers 40 percent of the province's area and feeds more than 46 percent of the province's population (in Chinese and translated).
* Clean water of the Feng River flows from its source for only 3 kilometers before it is fed by a small coal mine with 1,200 tons of waste water plus 800 tons of sewage every day.
* Every year, more than 2.43 billion cubic meters of water is drawn from the Feng River and return it with 560 million tons of waste.
* The Feng River, together with other major tributaries, has actually become the waste dumping site of the province's industry, mainly of mining and coking industries.
* The water of the Feng River is heavily loaded with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals; fish and shrimps have disappeared without any trace.
Perhaps the observation by the CEO of China Metallurgical Industrial Group could lend more insight into the link between coking and the environmental degradation in Shanxi (in He, 2004. translated)
　　Dark smokes are unbrokenly billowing up to the sky of Shanxi Feng River watershed, and the air is heavily polluted. Rivers are drying up, and everywhere is ridden with waste water; arable land is rapidly declining and soil is seriously contaminated. Whenever we think that more than 33 million people are living in such an environment, we will cast doubt on the production of coke on traditional coking ovens.

3.0 The Ins and Outs of the Sino-EU Coke Trade War
　　Since 1998, due to environmental concerns, more than 18 million tons of coking capacities have been closed down across the world, the bulk of which is located in the United States and the EU (He, 2004; Yang, 2004). The fall in supply gave rise to worldwide shortage of coke. The economic resurgence that began in 2003 spurred the growth of steel industry throughout the world, which further widened the gap between supply of and demand for coke. The result was soaring coke prices in the world market, driving steelworks in many countries, including the United States and the EU, to turn to China for coke.

　　Orders for coke that came tick and fast triggered a surge in coke production in China, as we described above. And there were no sign of slowing. Driven by opportunities for profiteering, investments continually poured into coking industry in Shanxi, pumping up coking capacity by 28 million tons within the year of 2003 and bringing another coking capacity of 58 million tons under construction (Wang et al, 2004). If the new or more capacity is put into use, the burden on the already stretched carrying capacity of the environment will be unbearably onerous and the threat to the local resource base intolerably severe. This ultimately galvanized the Chinese government to take actions to check coke production.

　　In March 24, 2004, the Chinese government made a decision to cut back on coke export quota in order to temper the unexampled growth of coke export in attempting to protect the environment. This proclamation provided a spark to the fierce trade war between China and the EU.

　　From the stance of the EU, China's slash in export quota was nothing different from adding one disaster to another, as the market responded to China's quota cut by pushing up the coke price to 400 USD/ton in April, 2004. The curtailed supply and consequent prohibitive coke price not only jargonized the raw material security for steel makers in the EU, but also undercut the competitiveness of their products in the global market. Roiled by such a situation, the EU issued an ultimatum to China in May 07, 2004, demanding China to withdraw its export quota within one week or it would make an appeal to the WTO for a final resolution.

　　But when the final day arrived, the EU did not filed the appeal to the WTO as it threatened, but put off it to 28 May, 2004, partly because the appeal to the WTO is not only time-consuming, making the resolution meaningless for fixing the problems staring in the EU's face, but also hurts the long-term bilateral relationship. Another reason is that China, faced with such an intransigent threat, showed signs of negotiations for the quota (Huang et al, 2004).

　　One day before May 28, 2004, China and the EU reached an agreement, with China promising to export coke to the EU at an amount not less than that exported in the previous year (2003), and the EU proclaiming a temporary suspension of its appeal to the WTO (Wang, 2004b).

4.0 Environmental Ethics Implications for the EU, China and the WTO
　　Despite the fact that the Sino-EU coke trade dispute had died down as many people expected, it left us with a lot of food for thought, especially from the perspective of environmental ethics, for the starting point of this trade dispute was China's effort to stem environmental deterioration and the end result seemed to suggest that the EU put sand in the China's wheel. As environmental degradation has become a global concern, environmental ethics has been gaining prominence in the global endeavor to improve the environment, and an increasing body of literature links the WTO and accelerated global environmental degradation (Stonehouse, 2000), it is of interest to explore the environmental ethical implications in this trade dispute.

4.1 Implications for the EU
　　By pressuring China into exporting more coke, thus putting handicaps on China's effort to improve its environment, the EU made itself ethically problematic. For one thing, the EU transferred damages to the environment that should have happened to the EU territory to China's territory, and the suffering that should have been born by the EU's people to Chinese people. As noted previously, the EU closed down many coking facilities in its own territory to protect the environment, and increased coke imports instead. That means the EU are full aware that the production of coke is detrimental to the environment and human health, and that the increased coke production in China resulting from increased export would do more disservice to the environment in China's coke-producing regions or provinces. The moral ground of the EU is more subject to question when this coke trade war is juxtaposed with the EU's raising the quality bar on electronic products imported from China. After this new quality standard is brought into effect, any product of Chinese manufacture that contains mercury would be refused to enter the EU's territory, for mercury is a pollutant to the environment. The confluence of these two issues weighs in on the EU's selfishness, respecting its own environment while showing cavalier disregard for the environment in China. "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise (Leopold, 2000. in Sterba: 114)". Clearly, the EU was wrong in committing something that could lead to the impairment of the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community in China.
For another, damaging China' environment in the short term is tantamount to damaging the global environment in the long term. The progress in human knowledge, especially that in environmental science, has proved that ecological processes on the planet are closely interlinked. The dysfunction in ecological processes in one region or country would probably find its way into another region or country. That means, if China, or rather, Shanxi province loses its fight against an environmental problem, other regions or countries, including the EU, could, and in many cases would, likely to suffer as well (Rollin, 2000. in Sterba: 119). Indeed, the vast volumes of toxicants emitted from China's coke ovens could fly thousands of miles away, polluting the sky over other countries too. SO2 emissions from China could cause acid rain worldwide, changing the chemical characteristics of soil and water and damaging forests. Toxicants in the Feng River would finally reach the Yellow sea, then to Pacific, and then to anywhere the water currents flow. Fishes or other oceanic animals could carry these toxicants wherever they travel, probably to a place far away from China. In this sense, the damages that the EU inflicted on China would not all stay within the borders of China, but likely spread to the rest of whole world. What the EU impaired would likely be the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community in the whole globe.

　　Therefore, the EU should not have pressured China into exporting more. It should put an end to its "double-standards" regarding to the environment, and stop its practice that would lead to more environmental damages in China. At the very least, the EU should help China to mitigate the negative environmental and human health consequences stemming from augmented export.

4.2 Implications for China
　　As with the EU, there are environmental ethics problems with the Chinese governments. While the EU's problem was hobbling China's effort to improve its environment, China's problems lie in its understanding of the relationship between human and nature. While the EU deepened China's environmental damages, China was the initiator of the environmental damages and failed to rein in these damages for a long time before the EU jumped in.

　　Ever since China started its policy of reform and opening to the outside world, China has been clinging to a principle of "development first, cleanup later." Economic growth, which means more income and more material consumption, takes precedence over everything else. The environment is viewed only as the source of materials for production and the dumping place for waste. The rate of economic growth has become a benchmark for chief government officials' performance, and the criteria for their promotion. Under the force of such an "anthropocentric" worldview, and due to shortage of adequate technology, economic growth in many places of China could only be achieved in a crude way, implying high environmental cost for generating GDP growth. It has been reported that half of the twenty worst polluted cities of the world are now in China (Xinhua, 2005b). Another evaluation shows that almost all rivers in China are contaminated, and two thirds of its 338 cities for which air quality data are available are seen as polluted (Wikipedia, 2005). And diseases related to air pollution have become the leading cause of human death (Hood et al, 1999).

　　As environmental problems point to the negative effects of industrial activities, the academic mainstream and the bureaucratic establishment tend to respond with little more than modest adjustments to the status quo, such as a cut in coke export quota. It is argued, however, that these negative effects cannot be corrected through improvements in material efficiency and traditional "end-of-pipe" waste treatment alone, and that any incremental or marginal changes to the economy alone could not contribute significantly to environmental improvement (Mickelson and Rees in Hughes et al, 2003). Environmental improvement calls for fundamental change in the worldview.
This is particularly true of China. As long as China's economic development is measured only by the rate of GDP growth, and as long as Chinese people are obsessed with the dream of consuming as much as, or even more than, western people do, little hopes could be held out for a fundamental improvement in its environment. One the one side, China is a country with poor resource base. China's oil reserve per capita is only eight percent, gas six percent, and coal 55 percent of the world's average (Prospect Weekly, 2005). On the other, China is a country with low resource efficiency. China's energy consumption per unit of GDP is three times more that of the United States and about ten times more than that of Japan (EIA, 2005). In 2004, China's oil consumption was 7.4%, coal 31%, iron ore 30%, and aluminum oxide 25% of the world's total, respectively, while its GDP accounted for only 4% (Pang, 2005). Given the meager energy resource reserves per capita and the high resource consumption per unit of GDP, China's resource base would soon be depleted. And the waste and emissions discharged from its crude economic activities would soon put the carrying capacity of the environment beyond the limit. As resource base could not support the huge population, another round of accelerated environmental degradation would soon set in, but this time due to poverty.

　　To stem the tide of environmental degradation, China's fascination with economic growth should be dampened. Chinese people, government officials in particular, should reexamine the relationship between human and nature, and make a fundamental change in their values. Put simply, China's "anthropocentric" worldview should be tempered by the "ecocentric" worldview.

　　At the core of the "ecocentric" are five elements: (1) achieving harmony with nature; (2) regarding all nature as equal; (3) taking only simple material needs from nature; (4) recognizing the limitation of earth supplies; (5) using appropriate technology; (6) recycling (Devil et al, 2000. in Sterba; Gladwin and Kennelly in Bansal and Howard, 1997).

　　When one's "anthropocentric" worldview is sufficiently tempered (but not replaced) by the "ecocentric" worldview, fundamental changes could manifest themselves in his/her ontology and ethics. To start with, nature is regarded as an interlinked system of which human is a part. Humans are not totally superior to the rest of nature, though they are above the biosphere in the regard of intelligence (Gladwin and Kennelly in Bansal and Howard, 1997). Second, all existences, be it soil, a river, a tree, or a blue sky, have their intrinsic value, and should therefore be respected and protected in a proper manner. Nature is no longer merely the resource base for human needs and dumping place for human waste. Third, sufficient attention will be paid to social equity, not only within generations but also between generations. Just as the vital basic needs of the marginalized, poor and most vulnerable segments are satisfied (Gladwin and Kennelly in Bansal and Howard, 1997), so the liberties, opportunities or welfare-generating potential of future generations are preserved (Weiss, 1989). Fourth, it is recognized that economy cannot grow forever in a closed ecological system, and that there are limits on the capabilities of ecological systems to regenerate or recover from the impairment by human activities.

　　With fundamental changes in China's worldview, a swing in its development paradigm can be expected. Emphasis would be placed on the quality of development instead of the rate of economic growth. People would show more care about all non-human existences in nature and about the health of the ecological system in which they live. Current generations would put a constraint on their appetite for consumption so as not to prosper at the expense of their descendants. And intragenerational equity would also be taken into account so that the widening gap between the rich and the poor would not have happened.

　　In a word, China's environment would be in better custody and the interests of the disadvantaged social groups and future generations would better protected.

4.3 Implications for WTO
　　International trade has been encouraged since the World War Two. It has made a great deal of contribution to the improved economic prosperity and enhanced material consumption the world now enjoys. By eliminating market failures, international trade is claimed to be capable of reducing waste resulting from inefficient use of natural resources.

　　While it is argued that freer trade, through promoting urbanization and industrialization, redounds to lowering population growth and furnishes the financial means required for environmental protection (Yu, 1994), a mounting evidence points to the linkages between liberalized trade and damages to the global environment, ecology and natural resource base (Stonehouse, 2000). NAFTA, the free trade agreement between Canada, the USA, and Mexico, is claimed to responsible for suffered environment and social wealth in Mexico (Marijnissen, 2000). Due to pollution caused by logging and pulp and paper processing, residents living on the border between the USA and Mexico have seen growing health problems (Anderson, 2000). Likewise, the high demands for lumber in Japan, Korea and Taiwan depleted the forest in Philippine, and caused significant damages to the forests in Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar (Daigle, 1998. in Dallmeyer et al). And the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, the most biodiverse region in the world and home to countless species of flora and fauna, is being destructed at an alarming rate since Brazil's entry into WTO (Borge et al, 1999). Now in China, increased export of coke demanded by the EU in virtue of the WTO agreement is inflicting extra damages on China's environment as well as human health.

　　The root of these environmental damages could be found in the fact that the WTO is an organization that commits itself to promoting trade between countries and regions. When it was established in 1946 as GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade), little attention was paid to the environmental consequences of freer trade. Even though in the Uruguay Round, environmental issues were negotiated, no specific provisions for environmental protection were reached (Stonhouse, 2000). Even now the WTO has no specific arrangements to cope with environmental issue, despite the fact that it created the Trade and Environmental Committee (TEC) in 1994 in that this committee is not so much concerned about the effect of trade on the environment as the effect of environmental policies on trade. This is fully embodied in the committee's work principles (available on line at: http://www.wto.org/english)
　　(1) The WTO is only competent to deal with trade. In other words, in environmental issues its only task is to study questions that arise when environmental policies have a significant impact on trade. The WTO is not an environmental agency. Its members do not want it to intervene in national or international environmental policies or to set environmental standards. Other agencies that specialize in environmental issues are better qualified to undertake those tasks.
　　(2) If the committee does identify problems, its solutions must continue to uphold the principles of the WTO trading system.
　　More generally WTO members are convinced that an open, equitable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system has a key contribution to make to national and international efforts to better protect and conserve environmental resources and promote sustainable development. This was recognized in the results of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio (the "Earth Summit") and its 2002 successor, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

　　The WTO subjects itself to charges of environmental ethics for two reasons. The first reason is philosophical. Freer trade, a concept resting on efficiency of neoclassical economics, treats land merely as property. It disposes of the elements of land such as soil, mountains, rivers, forests and so on as a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong. The land-relation embedded in it is "strictly economic, entailing privileges but no obligations (Leopold, 2000. in Sterba: 140)." As a result, it shows no love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for the land value (Leopold, 2000. in Sterba). In constantly pursuing trade volume and current generations' maximum material consumption under the trade principles such as "transparency, equity and non-discrimination," it turns a blind eye to current generations' responsibility to pass the land, in as good condition as they inherited from their former generations, on to future generations. If such a philosophy is not corrected, damages to the land are ineluctable.
The second reason is ecological---the WTO exposes itself to ethical charges by not putting a limitation on freedom of action that causes damages to the land. This is best exemplified in the prevailing of freer trade over the protection of the environment when conflict between them arises. The effort of the United States to protect the turtles in the coastal areas of India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand was thwarted by the ruling of the WTO in the shrimp-turtle case under the principle of non-discrimination. Again USA's effort to keep dolphins from being killed in tuna fishery was hampered by the WTO's ruling under the principle of achieving predictability through trade. If these two rulings led to more loss of biodiversity on earth, the anticipated outcome of the ruling of the WTO on Sino-EU trade dispute resulted in more damages to China's environment and human health. China was forced to make a recession during the following negotiations in that it anticipated that the ruling following the EU's appellation to the WTO would be, in all likelihood, in favor of the EU by granting the EU the right to retaliate against China's cutback on coke export.

　　To make itself ethically sound, the WTO should first reexamine its epistemology of the relationship between human and nature, and revisit its way of treating the land as a matter of expediency. It should respect all elements of the land, including soil, mountains, rivers, plants and animals etc. and foster a point of view that all these existences in nature have their intrinsic value and destructive use of them could be morally wrong. It should also realize that the removal of trade restrictions and market inefficiency would lead to destructive use of these elements, though doing so could yield temporary benefits for some signatory nations. Finally, it should apply the new ethics---the land ethics---to its agreements and translate them into action.

Specifically:
* Highlighting the importance of environmental protection by incorporating it into the key trade principles. The existing trade principles, namely trade without discrimination, freer trade, predictability through binding and transparency, promoting fair competition and encouraging development and economic reform are incapable of providing a forum for stimulating activities of environmental protection. These principles tend to create the misconception that the freer trade, the better for the world, blinding the world to the fact that freer trade could also lead to environmental damages, making some regions or countries worse. A principle in relation to the environment would be pivotal to correct such a delusion.

* Upholding the environmental equity between nations. Freer trade cannot be capitalized on by some countries to pressure other countries into conducting trade to the detriment of the environment, as in the case of Sino-EU coke trade dispute. This becomes particularly important when some countries close down dirty industries in their own territory while increasing the import from other nations. While the WTO could not allow signatories to take trade actions to protect their environment in any manner they please, the WTO should prevent international environmental inequity from being imposed by one country on another country. Specific provisions should be integrated into the WTO agreement to preclude a country or an economic union that has cut down on dirty industries from retaliating against other countries that take trade actions to attenuate the environmental damages from the same dirty industries.

* Facilitating technological transfer from developed countries to developing countries. Many environmental problems in developing countries resulting from increased trade are likely due to lack of adequate technologies. This opens door to international cooperation in promoting trade between nations while better protecting the environment. For example, when there is sufficient evidence indicating serious environmental damages are taking place in an exporter country as a result of absence of appropriate technology, the importer country ought to transfer related technology, provided it is proved to possess, to the exporter country at a favorable price.

* Structuring the counterpart of CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) into the WTO agreement. CDM is introduced into the "Kyoto Protocol" to let countries in Annex I gain carbon emissions credits by helping countries in Annex II to set up clean projects. The practice has proved it to be very successful. Therefore, it is worthwhile contemplating about the possibility of structuring an analogous mechanism, say, Green Trade Mechanism (GTM), into the WTO agreement. If a country or an economic union closes dirty industries in its own territory and turn to other countries for import, this country or union could be, at the discretion of the exporter country, required to set up a green project in the exporter's territory before it is entitled to import or import more than the exporter is willing to.

* Expanding the responsibility of the Trade and Environmental Committee (TEC). Whether it is to facilitate technological transfer from developed countries to developing countries or to structure the GTM into the WTO agreement, it calls for an infrastructure in place for a solution. As opposed to focusing on the impacts of environmental policies on trade, the TEC should also get concerned more about the reverse, and take more responsibilities. Never think it is only competent to deal with trade. It is argued that WTO is robust enough to cover trade-related environmental issues in its purview (Stonehouse, 2000). Be what it may, the WTO should be held accountable and responsible for freer-trade-related environmental problems, simply because it is the WTO who is the initiator and facilitator of freer trade.

5.0 Conclusion
　　The coke trade dispute between China and the EU, which was provoked by China's declamation of a cutback on coke export quota, drew much attention from both the media and industry circle. Though a mutual agreement was forged following a series of tough and enduring negotiations, it could not paper over the fact that China was forced to export more than it was originally intended to, making its determination to improve the environment and human health in coke-producing regions, Shanxi province in particular, bordering on abortion. What spurred China to make such a big concession was its fear that the WTO would rule against China's proclamation, granting the EU to take retaliatory actions and putting Sino-EU's bilateral trade relations at stake.

　　For all that the trade dispute has subsided, it affords much for thought about environmental ethics. Ethical problems arose on the EU side because it pressured China into doing something that would cause more damages to China's environment and human health, and because such a thing tends to impair the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biocommunity in China or even in the whole globe. Environmental ethical problems arise on China's side because its economic development has been dominated by the "anthropocentric" worldview, with little, if any, regard to non-human existences in nature and to intragenerational and intergenerational equity. And the WTO is open to ethical charges because its trade philosophy treats land merely as property and shows no respect for other parts than human beings in nature, such as soil, mountains, rovers, forests etc., and because its rulings are often issued at the expense of the environment under the pretext of sticking to its trade principles.

　　To be ethically sound, the EU should heighten its sense of international environmental equity and should not have pressured China into exporting more coke than it was willing to; China's "anthropocentric" worldview should be sufficiently tempered by the "eco-centric" worldview; and the WTO should implement a string of reforms, including adding environmental principle to its trading system, upholding international environmental equity, facilitating developed countries to provide assistance to developing countries, as well as expanding the responsibilities of the TEC.

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