ISSUE 41: MARCH-MAY 2006

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WTO must strive for coherent trade, sustainability policies

By Gary Sampson and Bradnee Chambers

The Hong Kong Ministerial talks barely managed to keep the Doha Development Round alive, so it is surely time for some hard thinking of where the World Trade Organization is heading.

One of the top issues on the "hard thinking" agenda must be how to deal with the extraordinary challenges facing the World Trade Organization which are outside of the traditional rubric of trade liberalization and increasingly in the areas of social development, human welfare and the environment. In other words, issues typically considered more in the field of sustainable development rather than free trade.

If this trend continues, and these issues are not dealt with more effectively, they may well completely derail what is already a struggling round of negotiations. In short, it is time to underscore that the importance of the concept of sustainable development and for the WTO to pay more than lip-service to its role in nontraditional areas of international trade.

The bread-and-butter activities of the WTO make it an important potential contributor to sustainable development. It is formally recognized in the preamble of the Marrakech Agreement that established it 1994 and is a pillar of the Doha Development Agenda. In particular, priority areas for the Doha Round include negotiations on agricultural products with improved access for the exports of developing countries.

Poverty is well accepted as one of the worst forms of pollution, and some of the poorest countries in the world are banking on a positive outcome from the WTO negotiations to alleviate poverty. Perhaps most notable in this respect are the negotiations on the trade in cotton with improved market access for some of the poorest countries of the world. Also in terms of market access, while the advantages of removing obstacles to trade in environmental goods and services are well accepted, the question remains as to how to go about it.

In this sense a successful completion of the market access negotiations from Doha Round, with the further removal of trade restrictions and distortions, is critical to achieving the goals of sustainable development.

Others are banking on a solution to be found with respect to fishing subsidies that are seriously depleting the world's fish stocks. It is also important for many in the environment community to see progress in the negotiations on the relationship between WTO rules and multilateral environment agreements such as the Kyoto and the Cartagena Protocols.

However, the relationship between the WTO and sustainable development extends well beyond the Doha Development Agenda. Compared to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO now deals with many issues not traditionally considered to be in the domain of trade policy but that are on center stage of the sustainable development agenda.

There are many examples. The WTO dispute settlement system is confronted with disputes relating to the conservation of endangered species such as turtles, public health and the consumption of hormone treated beef, and trade in genetically modified organisms. The WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has important implications for the access to essential medicines for impoverished people, the patenting of life forms, rewarding indigenous peoples for their genetic resources, and the conservation of biodiversity. The WTO services and agreement has the potential to affect the provision of health and education services, as well as public utilities such as water.

The WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement has implications for eco-labeling, and the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement addresses the role of precautions when public health is thought to be at risk. Along with trade liberalization and growth, these are all key issues for those concerned with sustainable development.

In fact, although many may understandably balk at the notion, the WTO has unquestionably gravitated toward becoming a World Trade and Sustainable Development Organization. Some may not like this development, but it is - by design or by default - a reality of the day.

Critics of this idea argue a trade policy organization such as the WTO should not be responsible for many of the sustainable development-related issues that are gravitating toward it. The specialized agencies of the United Nations - the World Health Organization, International Labor Office, United Nations Environment Program and others - are charged with advancing the pillars of sustainable development, and a case can be made that these institutions should be strengthened and given the resources they need to carry out their tasks successfully.

But this is unlikely to happen. Putting it bluntly, there is not the same willingness to forgo national sovereignty and accept strong compliance mechanisms in treaties negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations and its specialized agencies as has been the experience with the WTO. What is needed on the part of governments is an appreciation of a need for greater coherence in global policy-making and the political will to get it done.

We have only seen a preview of the issues that will certainly find themselves on the WTO agenda and that deal with sustainable development. It is time that negotiators took stock of this fact and confronted how to improve global policy-making in both the trade area as well as all those areas of nontraditional trade concern. In other words, how to bring policy coherence to issues of relevance to both trade and sustainable development should be a priority for both the Doha Round and the everyday activities of the WTO.

Gary Sampson is the author of WTO and Sustainable Development and former senior councilor of the WTO. Bradnee Chambers is a senior researcher and officer at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies. This article first appeared in the Nikkei Weekly on February 6.

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