Any chance for sustainable trade under the World Trade Organisation?

With the break down in the latest round of international negotiations, sustainable development still doesn’t have a strong voice in the world of trade

By Kimbowa Richard, JEEP and Uganda NGO Coalition for Sustainable Development

There continues a raging global debate about whether trade is ‘good or bad’. One of the key benchmarks of this is whether trade can really contribute to the delivery of sustainable development.

Sustainable development is a central principle of the United Nations’ work and probably the most vital challenge that confronts our generation. It refers to development that meets the needs of today without destroying the environment so badly that future generations will be unable to meet their needs. Sustainable trade therefore is that which thrives under this arrangement.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an international body that facilitates trade negotiations where nations agree on which areas are open to negotiations and under which requirements these negotiations take place. The fifth WTO conference took place in Cancun, Mexico, in September – and it failed.

The conference was meant to take stock of issues agreed on in the so-called Development Agenda agreed in Qatar’s capital Doha in 2001.

But in Cancun in September sustainable development issues were generally pushed away by new issues on investment, competition policy, government procurement and trade facilitation. Developing countries had beforehand made it clear, that they wanted to see the already agreed arrangements implemented, before new issues could be discussed. Still, especially EU and the US pushed the new issues to the table. Also, especially EU’s stand on its subsidies for agriculture became a stumbling block.

Meanwhile, the failure of the conference leaves us to go on with business as usual: World trade is estimated to be worth $10 million a minute. The world’s 49 least developed countries including Uganda account for only 0.4% of this. Poor countries continue to be denied $ 700 billion every year because of unfair trade rules.

Sustainable development: Is the WTO backtracking?

The WTO policies are directed at increasing wealth by increasing trade. But trade is recognised by the United Nations as being only one element of economic growth. To effectively increase global development, trade and economic growth have to be in balance with the other two pillars, social progress and environmental protection – this is one of the messages that the anti globalisation movement is putting across to any regional and international trade or economic issues.

The Swedish state secretary for trade Lotta Fogde put it clearly regarding sustainable development in Cancun. She pointed out that the slow progress, or even backtracking will not do in future.

“In the UN and elsewhere, we have agreed on a comprehensive agenda to promote sustainable development and halve the number of people that live in poverty. At Doha, we obliged ourselves to make the WTO coherent with these ambitions as regards the environment. Regrettably, on the social dimension of the sustainable development no similar commitments could be reached. What is worse, however – so far no tangible results have been achieved even on the minimalist environmental agenda”, she said.

Sustainable development missed in Cancun

Sustainable development issues were raised by the civil society organisations and by ministers in the NGO meetings and during the conference respectively. But the sudden collapse made us miss some decisions. While the deadlock arose from disagreements mainly on agriculture subsidies and whether or not to launch negotiations on new issues, it was frustrating to see only a few vanguards for sustainable development judging from the statements made by the ministers.

However all is not lost. WTO can still take some steps towards sustainability including the following:

There is need for a complete reorientation of the WTO, from trade liberalisation to a stronger focus on development and equity, as well as fully endorsing the UN Millennium Development Goals as its overarching objective. This would provide a clear anti poverty framework in which to discuss trade and its impact on the poor and the environment

The issue of granting observer status for Secretariats of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) like on bio safety and climate change, should be resolved as quickly as possible since they set to play an important role in delivering sustainable development. This will give confidence that WTO rules cannot and should not overrule environmental conventions

More time should be devoted to debate environmental topics and sustainable development during the WTO in order to secure a sustainable trading system

Artists against WTO

American actor Harry Belafonte, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, South African writer Nadime Gordimer and 38 other artists sent a joint letter to the chief negotiators of WTO in Cancun. The artists are members of The International Network for Cultural Diversity, INCD. The network fears that globalisation ruins indigenous cultures and ask the WTO to secure that cultural values are not overpowered by economical interests in the WTO system.

“Many governments are pushed to compromise their cultural identity when striving to liberalise the national economy”, the group writes.

Check the artists’ scepticism towards the international trade organisation at www.incd.net