Conflict between Free Trade and Environment Protection------where we go and what we do tomorrow

e past, peasants had to destroy plenty of forest and grassland for cultivating to support so many people. Now, some of these peasants are encouraged to give up cultivating and to plant more trees and grasses because China central government promises to provide free food to them. And it was also reported that between 1998 and the end of 2000, China's central government would have spent a total of RMB 27 billions(US$3.26 billions) for ecological and environmental project.5 It is incredible and unprecedented in China's history. So countries especially developing countries argue that economic growth and trade liberalization have a positive role to play in the achievement of sustainable development. And an open, equitable and non-discriminatory multinational trading system has a key contribution to make to national and international efforts to better protection and conserve environmental resources and promote sustainable development. Further liberalization of international trade has a crucial role to play in order to generate revenue that can be devoted to environmental protection, to allow for a more efficient allocation of environmental resources and for the removal of trade restrictive policies. It is also argued that trade restrictions are neither the only nor necessary policy instruments to use in multilateral environmental agreements. It is also stated in Principle 21 of the Rio Declaration that "unilateral measures should be avoided as far as possible". There is no doubt that the developing countries are the initiators and supporters of above-said opinions. The developing countries are also concerned with the attitude of the developed countries. The developing countries argue that developed countries are seem to be more concerned with environment, but actually not, because they consume more energy and thus cause more pollution, but they are unwilling to reduce energy consuming. It seems that they are more concerned with promoting environmental protection, but actually not, because environment standards they use are not always for environmental protection, but for something else. The NAFTA6 is a good example, what the US labour unions wanted to do was that they want to prevent the loss of job to lower-cost Mexico. It seems that they are more concerned with environment of the whole world, but actually not, because they export goods that are domestically prohibited in their own territory to the developing countries, they even export hazardous and other wastes to the developing countries. It seems that they are more concerned with environment of the whole world, but actually not, because they are more powerful, they use the carrot and the stick to raise environmental standards, but they are miserly in finance and technology assistance. The developing countries are left to be lack of information and technology to change their production methods to meet the environmental standards. However, on the other hand, many environmentalists are critical of trade liberalization. In their view, free trade is responsible for many aspects of environmental degradation and for the failure of policy makers to protect the environment adequately. They argue that free trade shifting the production of pollution-intensive goods toward the low-income, high-polluting South and that will increase global pollution, because the decrease in northern emissions is insufficient at the margin to compensate for the increase in southern emissions. They also think that because pollution is not local but trans-boundary or global in nature so pollution in one country may affect another country?s environment. Green house is a good example. Another important argument that environmentalists hold is that the trade liberalization can make the developing countries and developed countries lower the environment standard together. Why? In practice, every businessman wants to make the great profits in the international business, whereas lowering