The fragmentation of international law has given rise to a conflict of jurisdiction for trade disputes involving agricultural biotechnology products

Abstract

The proliferation of international agreements has raised the challenge of resolving disputes that simultaneously fall under different specialised regimes within international law. The emergence of specialised regimes, and the establishment of independent judicial institutions to oversee them, has contributed to the ‘fragmentation’ of international law. Furthermore, recent agreements negotiated within a particular specialised regime have included provisions that address subject matters outside of their ‘specialised’ mandate. The potential for jurisdictional conflict is seen in the tension between the international environmental and trade regimes, where environmental agreements have increasingly included trade-related measures that operate outside of the World Trade Organization framework. Agricultural biotechnology provides a pertinent example following the negotiation of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity to govern the trans-boundary movement of living modified organisms. This thesis explores the potential for overlapping jurisdiction between the specialised regimes of international environmental and trade law, with a particular focus on trade disputes involving agricultural biotechnology. This thesis initially considers the concept of fragmentation of international law and the consequences of the proliferation of judicial institutions. Next, the historical development of international environmental law and international trade law is explored, which has laid the foundation for potential parallel dispute proceedings before multiple judicial institutions. The thesis then analyses the principles of conflict of jurisdiction that may assist to resolve these disputes, and applies them to the case study of trade disputes involving agricultural biotechnology. The thesis concludes by considering the options available for addressing conflict of jurisdiction between the international trade and international environmental law regimes.