Greenwire | November 15, 2001 | Vol. 10, No. 9 | Damon Franz, Greenwire staff writer
Following a drawn-out negotiating session in which environmental issues were bandied about, delegates to the World Trade Organization agreed yesterday to launch a new round of talks in 2003 aimed at reducing barriers to global trade. While some U.S. officials, lawmakers and industry groups declared victory in achieving the new round, environmentalists for the most part were critical of the terms of the new talks.
During the six-day meeting in Doha, Qatar, representatives struggled to reach agreement on which specific topics and related trade barriers they will consider when the new talks begin. Under WTO rules, all 142 nations must agree on that list of issues, known as a Ministerial Declaration, for the talks to take place. Such consensus was not reached at the WTO's last ministerial meeting in Seattle, and conflicts over agriculture and environmental issues threatened to sink this week's meeting as well.
As the meeting drew to a close, India emerged as a key player in the talks, standing firm on several issues that are vital to developing nations and that also have major environmental consequences. After extending the talks for nearly a full day beyond the scheduled deadline, India agreed to language that acknowledged its concerns over investment rules, the environment and other areas perceived to put developing countries at a disadvantage. The last-minute breakthrough that saved the WTO from another embarrassing and potentially crippling failure was welcomed by several diverse groups, including United Nations environment officials and U.S. manufacturers.
"Negotiations on trade and the environment were, until recently, a taboo subject in the WTO," said Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program. "But the Ministerial Declaration issued in Qatar has shown that countries are now willing to address these complex links between the need to liberalize trade and the need to protect the world's forests, fisheries, wetlands and other precious resources."
And the National Association of Manufacturers called the agreement "a timely and important step toward restoring global economic confidence."
But some of the WTO's staunchest critics saw little progress in the agreement on a new round.
MULTILATERAL AGREEMENTS, ENVIRO GOODS AND SERVICES
The issue of whether to include the environment in the coming talks was one of the last to be resolved yesterday, with the European Union insisting that ecological issues be part of the new talks and India standing firmly opposed. Although the WTO has received angry criticism in the past two years for allegedly weakening environmental protections, developing countries complain that the environmental rules of wealthier nations amount to protectionist trade barriers.
One issue of concern to EU ministers was the relationship between trade rules and multilateral environmental agreements (MEA), such as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which was completed in Morocco over the weekend. In addition to marking how trade obligations will be affected by MEAs, yesterday's declaration seeks to establish procedures for communications between environment ministers and WTO committees.
Another priority the negotiators put on the table for the next round of talks was the reduction of barriers to trade for environmental goods and services. According to analysts following the talks, reduction of those barriers could make it easier for foreign companies to control areas that have traditionally been public, like water supply and waste management.
While the EU applauded the decision to include environmental issues in the new talks, reaction was decidedly mixed among the environmental groups that have been most critical of the WTO over that issue. The World Wildlife Fund hailed the move to address the relationship between WTO rules and MEAs as a political breakthrough. "It is important to protect MEAs from the WTO," said WWF Trade Coordinator Mikel Insausti.
Others, however, criticized the decision to lower trade barriers for environmental goods and services. "This removes yet another check on the multinational push to force countries to treat their water resources as just another commodity," said representives from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
INVESTMENT
Like the environment, the relationship between trade and investment turned out to be a contentious area that delayed the talks beyond the deadline but was finally included in the declaration. The framework declares that "transparent, stable and predictable conditions for long-term cross-border investment" are needed in global trade.
The issue has been controversial because some say the investment rules give corporations the right to challenge a government's health and environmental standards if those standards harm profits. In the North American Free Trade Agreement, investors already have the right to sue governments, and a Canadian company that makes a key ingredient in the fuel additive MTBE has sued the United States for phasing out the water pollutant.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said protections for investors "make it more difficult for governments to formulate policy on the basis of public health and well being."
AGRICULTURE
Agricultural policy has recently been an area of conflict between the United States and the EU, with each complaining the other unfairly subsidizes its farmers, causing the market to be flooded with crops and harming fair trade. On this issue, the EU, and particularly France, accepted a difficult compromise by agreeing to language that could lead to the eventual prohibition of export subsidies.
Some analysts predict that if Europe makes significant cuts to its export subsidies during the actual negotiations, the United States may be forced to drop many of the traditional crop subsidies that are the subject of fierce debate in Congress right now. Conservation groups criticize those direct payments for encouraging excess production and damaging the environment.
"If we talk about cutting subsidies and we both subsidize our farmers, we must talk about cutting all our subsidies," said EU representative Wilfried Schneider. Schneider pointed to the United States' annual emergency aid packages -- which total billions of dollar each year but are not currently limited by WTO rules -- as an example of U.S. subsidies the EU would like to see reduced. "Its no secret that five years in a row you have had billions of dollars in emergency aid which has hardly gone unnoticed."
Nevertheless, U.S. officials hailed the talks as a victory. "This is a historic agreement that provides a tremendous boost for trade negotiations to further open markets and reduce barriers that impede the competitiveness of American farmers," said Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, who recently released a report criticizing the current U.S. system of subsidies and calling for more money money to be spent on farm conservation.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the call for reducing domestic subsidies would "have a significantly greater effect on our trading partners who use more trade-distorting domestic support than we do."
Since conservation payments are generally considered acceptable by the WTO, it is possible that reducing direct crop subsidies could lead to an increase in spending for conservation. Still, the IATP representatives called WTO progress on agriculture "glacial."
FISHERIES
In addition to reducing agricultural subsidies, the trade negotiators also agreed to reduce subsidies for commercial fishermen. Such an agreement could potentially serve both to help U.S. fishermen -- who receive significantly less in government payments than EU and Japanese fishermen -- and quell the overfishing that has been blamed for declining fish stocks.
But one representative of a U.S. commercial fishing group said the declaration's language was so vague it could also apply to government programs designed to study fisheries and possibly help them recover. "I am torn and our organization is torn," said Justin LeBlanc of the National Fisheries Institute. "We have been working with environmental NGOs to support controls on fisheries subsidies that contribute to excess fishing capacity. ... But we're concerned about the broad language adopted at the WTO, as it could affect other programs that don't have a negative environmental impact."
Reaction at WWF, however, was decidedly positive. "The WTO decision to open negotiations on fishing subsidies is very good news for the world's fisheries and for the communities that depend on them," said David Schorr, director of WWF's Sustainable Commerce Program. "For the first time, governments have recognized the responsibility of the WTO to do its part in promoting the health of a vital natural resource."
OTHER ISSUES
While the United States appears to have scored victories on agriculture and fisheries subsidies, it made concessions in the areas of intellectual property and dumping.
In a section titled Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Southern Hemisphere countries won language stating that the agreement would be interpreted "in a manner supportive of public health, by promoting both access to existing medicines and research and development into new medicines." The language could lead to cheaper drugs for developing nations.
And the U.S. negotiator also agreed to open talks on a potential anti-dumping provision, even though such a rule could hurt the nation's steel and semiconductor industries.Greenwire:
