"Any news of M. de la Perouse?", Louis XVI is said to have asked before his execution. Jean Francois de Galloupe de La Perouse, who famously visited Botany Bay (modern Sydney, Australia) in January 1788, precisely the same time the founding First Fleet arrived - only to vanish thereafter - was the greatest and most romantic of the French Pacific explorers. He served with distinction in the Seven Years' War and the Wars of the American Revolution, famously raiding the British commercial bases in Hudson Bay in the early 1780s. He also plied the trade routes between Mauritius (then Isle De France) and India. Based on his talent, and the then government's desire to best the exploits of James Cook, he was selected for a great Voyage of Discovery. Among his many achievements was finding La Perouse Strait (between the Japanese and Russian islands of the North-West Pacific). Tragically, after visiting the British colony in New South Wales, his ships disappeared somewhere off Samoa - and his fate remained an enigma for the French people until the 1960s. Dunmore's narrative brings us both the splendor and the tragedy of La Perouse's career.

This review reproduced here with the permission of the authorand the Executive Editor of the Journal of Environment &Development

It was not until the beginning of this decade thatenvironmentalists truly began to discover the environmental relevance of trade issues. The singular event of the GATT decision on the Tuna/Dolphin case ensured the battle between trade proponents and environmentalists would be joined. Since then, it has been an "Us" versus "Them" attitude, from both trade liberalization proponents and environmentalists. The free trade advocates, having been around for many years, did not welcome the environmentalist's intervention. The debate is still framed by two questions "How does trade liberalization harm the environment?" and "How do environmental protection measures interfere with trade liberalization?" It is within this context that Agriculture, Trade, & The Environment must be reviewed.

OVERVIEW Agriculture, Trade, & The Environment has a promising title. Trade versus environment debates have more often than not neglected agricultural issues. A book that "discovers linkages" between trade and the environment, without neglecting agriculture, has the potential to advance long-standing traditional view-points. Unfortunately, the reader will be disappointed. While the book does a good job of presenting the traditional free market argument that increasing public wealth will increase the public's desire for environmental protection, it does not seriously address agricultural aspects of the trade versus environment debate.

Part of the book consists of papers presented at a symposium titled "Agriculture, Trade and the Environment: Understanding and Measuring the Critical Linkages" sponsored by the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, an organization made up of 160 economists from 16 countries. The other chapters were invited contributions. Almost all of the authors are economists.

The book includes a few good chapters and an excellent introduction to the pro-trade liberalization perspective. It does not deal well with agricultural issues and is mostly a rehash of economic models and arguments in favor of trade liberalization. In particular, the book emphasizes the theory that free trade, like a rising tide, lifts all boats, thus protecting also the environment. In the final chapter, it is admitted that "though the conference was intended to be agriculturally oriented, the larger issues related to the general environment quickly emerged as the focus" (p. 301). Agriculture, Trade and the Environment provides further proof that purist economics is an inadequate tool kit for environmental policy-making. Yet another glaring over-sight, the editors did not include any chapters on environmental economics theory such as those from University College London, the London School of Economics, or even the World Bank.

The editors have organized the papers and the invited contributions into four parts. The first few chapters deal with the linkages of trade and the environment to international institutions. Second, the linkages between trade, renewable resources, and international environmental goods are explored. The third part discusses ways to measure these linkages. The fourth section deals with the identification of future research needed.

DISCOVERING THE CRITICAL LINKAGES: TRADE, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT The ever-present Jagdish Bhagwati repeats the assertion that there is a positive correlation between income growth and the demand for environmental protection. Howard Gruenspecht looks at whether the suggested trade/environment linkages are valid, and whether there are other more cynical motivations for the environmentalists to interfere in trade talks. Ambassador Michael Smith, who identifies himself as a major player in trade and environment negotiations, reveals that he conducts his work on two principles "(1) that traders are, at heart, environmentalists ...; and (2) that carried to an extreme, the international crusade of environmentalists can end up hurting everyone" (p. 42). This clearly is a biased view that does not suggest one who is seeking balance.

Steve Charnovitz once again proposes his Global Environmental Organization that should operate along side of the World Trade Organization just like the International Labor Organization. In so doing, he fails to acknowledge the need for reform of the international trade regime which has been at the forefront of the trade and environment debate since Our Common Future was published in 1987. A chapter by Ballenger and Krissoff provides an adequate summary of one of the NAFTA environmental side agreements but devolves into a shallow and unconvincing account of interviews of environmental groups' and farm groups' positions on NAFTA related environmental provisions.

DISCOVERING THE CRITICAL LINKAGES: TRADE, RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOODS G.M. Heal leads off with a chapter on the management of international environmental goods. This is followed by Graciela Chichilnisky's discussion of property rights and the search for an equilibrium model for North-South trade. She concludes with the simplistic notion that the "South overproduces, but primarily because the North overconsumes" (p.107) and that "all in all, property rights improvements in the South could check the main economic source of overuse: prices which are below social costs" (p. 106). Therefore, Chichilnisky ignores the fact that natural resource prices in the North are also well below social costs.

Diao and Roe also try to tackle the North-South general equilibrium model. This section of the book ends with a chapter by John Walley on how to quantify trade and environment linkages. He points out that standard environmental regulation that supposedly interferes with trade actually has little effect. However, if instead a carbon tax were adopted, global production and trade patterns would be strongly impacted.

MEASURING THE CRITICAL LINKAGES This part of the book, which includes six competent chapters, finally begins to deal with the issues related to agriculture. The authors discuss the economic effects of environmental policies on the agriculture sectors in the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, the chapters perpetuate the one-sided perspective of the book by continuing to suggest that environmental issues have no place in trade liberalization talks (remember the rising tide).

KEY QUESTIONS AND RESEARCH NEEDS The lead sentence in this section says almost all that needs to be said: "Most of the research that has already been done on the relationship between expanded agricultural trade and environmental protection is theoretical, incomplete, and lacks sufficient empirical content" (p. 281).

JED V5N4