Many issues are being raised, but among the most contentious
will be
the efforts to link global trade rules with labour and
environmental
standards. Senior officials have failed to agree on a
draft
declaration for the summit, which will have to instead
be hammered
out by the ministers when they gather in Singapore.
The crux of the dispute is by now well known. Governments
of
developing countries (the South) - led by India, Indonesia
and
Malaysia - are opposed to ''confusing" an already complex
trade
agenda with ''new issues", including labour and the environment,
suspecting
they are merely an excuse to establish new protectionist
measures.
The governments of developed countries (the North) have
been pushing
these issues as a result of pressure from their own citizenry,
who
have watched in concern as industries flee to countries
with cheaper
labour and looser regulatory climates. But the North also
has its own
business agenda - the US, for instance, wants to discuss
labour
standards, but it also wants to reach an agreement on
freeing up
trade in information technology - and the bargaining in
Singapore will be
fierce.
Peter Ungphakorn, a well-known Thai trade journalist who
now works
full-time for the WTO in Geneva, points to three main
issues in the
dispute: the expansion of trade causes an increase in
environmental
impacts; the relationship between the WTO and other international
treaties; and what environmental regulations, if any,
should be
imposed on world trade.
As a result of northern pressure, a Committee on Trade
and
Environment (CTE) was established to look at these and
other related issues.
Unfortunately, its report ( which can be found on
the World Wide Web
at http://www.wto.org/wto/Trade+Env/tocte.html
) has amounted to little
except a laundry list of the views of each side.
''I found the CTE report to be disappointing but not surprising,"
said one American environmentalist, who outlined a number
of issues which
should come up at least on the margins of the meeting:
the process of
globalisation (there may even be some protests on this
issue);
eco-labelling; sustainable timber trade; trade in genetically
modified organisms; animal welfare issues; who will be
allowed to represent
the greens at the WTO; and the transparency of the WTO's
activities.
Another controversial issue will be whether trade measures
can refer
to production and process methods (PPMs). The US has passed
laws
barring imports of seafood harvested through methods damaging
to
dolphins and sea turtles. The Gatt, WTO's predecessor,
ruled the
dolphin-safe tuna law illegal - twice. Now the turtle-inspired
sanctions on shrimping are up for review, following a
complaint filed
by Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan and India.
But perhaps the most important green task in Singapore
is to decide
how the WTO's trade rules fit in with those enacted by
multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs). Governments voluntarily
enter into
treaties - such as the UN conventions on climate change
and
biodiversity, or the Montreal Protocol on the use of ozone-destroying
substances - but there is as yet no agreement on what
would happen in
a case where their provisions conflict with the statutes
of the WTO.
Some environmental treaties use trade sanctions as penalties.
Others
have actually been set up to regulate trade in certain
goods: CITES,
for instance is a convention on trade in endangered species,
and the
Basel Convention controls the international movement of
hazardous
substances.
''We haven't had a direct clash with other international
agreements
concerning the environment, but I'm sure it will come,"
says
Hans-Peter Werner, an information officer at the WTO's
secretariat in
Geneva. For instance, trade sanctions could be imposed
on a country
which fails to live up to its treaty commitments. But
as it stands,
that country could then file a complaint against the trade
sanctions
with the WTO, which could then order the sanctions to
be dropped.
It appears to be countries from the Association of Southeast
Asian
Nations (Asean) who are leading the fight to block recognition
of the
jurisdiction of these treaties. Asean recently proposed
that, should
such a conflict arise, the WTO could hand out ''waivers"
on a
case-by-case basis.
This dispute seems to be turning into a battle over who
will set the
rules that guide the way nations interact. The WTO, which
largely
represents the interests of business, does not seem willing
to accept
the legality of other international treaties, many of
them enacted
under the auspices of the United Nations. It is as if
a country's
Commerce Ministry decided to pick and choose which environmental
laws
it would follow.
If the WTO hopes to get along peaceably with the rest of
the world,
it should make recognising the jurisdiction of MEAs a
top priority.
There should be opportunities for other agreements, too.
Both environmentalists and free traders, for instance,
firmly oppose
subsidies for using natural resources, which are widespread
around
the world.
What is most needed is a return to the spirit of Rio de
Janeiro,
where in 1992 world leaders gathered for the Earth Summit
and pledged to
help each other merge environmental concerns with development.
Sadly,
all that now seems to be ancient history.