MEDIA ADVISORY
Friends of the Earth International 24 July
2006
TRADE TALKS DEADLOCK BRINGS NEW HOPE FOR
THE POOREST AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Geneva (Switzerland), 24 July 2006 --
Campaigners from Friends of the Earth
International today welcomed the collapse of
the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s trade
negotiations. This means that there is now
time to review and reconsider the
multilateral trading system in its
entirety.
This will be welcome news to millions of
people around the world who feared that a WTO
deal would have further impoverished the
world’s poorest people and caused irreparable
damage to the environment. Developing
countries, including India, also fear that a
WTO deal would cause immense harm to millions
of small and subsistence farmers.
Alberto Villarreal, Trade Campaigner at
Friends of the Earth in Latin America,
currently in Geneva, said “The collapse of
these talks is good news. The proposals on
the table had been driven by certain
governments attempting to put the commercial
interests of corporations before the needs of
workers, farmers, and the global
environment.”
Ronnie Hall, Trade Campaigner at Friends
of the Earth International added: “The delay
created by the failure of the Doha
negotiations must be used to review past
negotiations and analyse the flaws in the WTO
system as a whole. It will allow us to
reflect on how to develop multilateral
governance systems that will genuinely
promote fair and sustainable societies that
benefit everyone.”
The so-called ‘Doha Development Agenda’ is
not about development. Recent World Bank and
other studies [1] - and even government
negotiators [2] themselves - give witness to
the fact that the current trade liberalizing
agenda is not working for the majority of
people in the developing countries. It is
clear that the interests of the largest and
most powerful countries and their
transnational companies continue to dominate
the WTO’s agenda. [3]
Furthermore, consideration of the
disastrous potential global environmental
impact of current negotiating proposals is
virtually non-existent within the WTO [4].
This is in spite of the fact that there is
increasing evidence elsewhere, including from
studies commissioned by the European
Commission, that escalating international
trade in natural resources is likely to
damage global biodiversity and local
economies. [5]
Indeed, if more natural resources are
traded internationally instead of being
available for use locally - as certain
countries and transnational corporations wish
- this could increase poverty for millions in
the world’s poorest communities.[6]
For example, forests and fish and fish
products are both sectors slated for complete
or exceptionally high levels of
liberalization in the WTO’s current
negotiations. Yet worldwide, some 60 million
indigenous people are almost completely
reliant on forest resources for their
livelihoods – for food and fuel, medicines
and materials - and some 36 million people
directly employed in small-scale artisanal
fishing [7]. Similarly, current negotiations
to expand international trade in agricultural
products could threaten the livelihoods of
millions of small and peasant farmers
worldwide. In short, poverty could be
increased significantly by the WTO’s
negotiations. This would go completely
against the grain of governments’ existing
Millennium Development commitment to halve
world poverty by 2005.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE
CONTACT:
In Geneva, Alberto Villarreal, Trade
Campaigner at Friends of the Earth
International: +41 78 8389 504 (until july 29
only) or tel: +598 5228481, email
comercioredes@gmail.com
In London, Ronnie Hall, Trade Campaigner
at Friends of the Earth International: tel:
+44 7967017281,
ronnieh@foe.co.uk
In Brussels, Sonja Meister, Trade
Campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe:
tel: +32 484 975107,
sonja.meister@foeeurope.org
Or Niccolo Sarno, Media Officer at Friends
of the Earth International: tel: +31 20 622
1369 or
media@foei.org
NOTES TO EDITORS
[1] A study by the World Bank's
Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) released
in March 2006 concluded that the World Bank's
strategies on trade have not delivered on
employment and poverty reduction. World
Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group Issues
report Assessing Two Decades of Global Trade
Programs, IEG, World Bank, Washington DC, 22
March 2006,
www.worldbank.org/ieg/trade/docs/press_release_trade_evaluation.pdf
. In addtion, a 2006 study by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace also
suggests that the gains that have been
predicted from world trade are likely to be
much more modest than has been portrayed,
with those countries particularly reliant on
subsistence farming likely to be harmed.
Winners and Losers: Impact of the Doha Round
on Developing Countries, Sandra Polaski,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Washington DC, 2006,
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/BWfinal.pdf
[2] For example, the Hon. Charles Savarin,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade and
Labour, Commonwealth of Dominica, has said:
“In recent times, the rules, norms and
procedures of the multilateral trading system
have pushed the Caribbean to the precipice of
disaster…Called the Doha Development Round,
these on-going trade talks are failing the
Region.” Caribbean Regional Negotiating
Machinery press release, No. 27/2005,
December 6, 2005. The G33 group of countries
has also recently sent a letter to Pascal
Lamy stating that its members will not accept
proposed modalities for agriculture if these
do not include modalities on special products
(SPs) and a special safeguard mechanism (SSM)
that are key aspects of special and
differential treatment for developing
countries(Geneva, 20 April). These were
agreed in Hong Kong but have now been
sidelined for attention at some later
date.
[3] Some WTO papers are surprisingly
explicit about engagement with industry. For
example: “This forest products proposal is
driven by industry interest. The Santa
Catalina Group, which has industry
representatives from both developed and
developing countries, has met with NAMA
negotiators on several occasions to discuss
its members’ priorities” Market Access for
Non-Agricultural Products, Tariff
Liberalization in the Forests Product Sector,
Communication from Canada, Hong Kong China,
New Zealand, Thailand and the United States,
TN/MA/W/64, 18 October 2005 (05-4784), World
Trade Organization, Geneva.
[4] The WTO’s Committee on Trade and
Environment is mandated to oversee the
environmental impacts of all the WTO’s
current negotiations but has not done so.
Indeed, there is an unwritten rule in the WTO
that multilateral environmental or
sustainability impact assessments are not
permitted, because they are too
controversial, as Pascal Lamy himself
confirmed in a meeting with civil society ,
17 October 2005.
[5] The European Commission-financed
sustainability impact assessment on the
forest sector, for example, demonstrates that
there are likely to be significant and
irreversible impacts on forests and
biodiversity in ‘biodiversity hotspot’
countries such as Brazil, Indonesia,
countries in the Congo Basin and Papua New
Guinea. In addition, countries that currently
protect their forest industries using trade
measures can expect those industries to
shrink and possibly collapse. Sustainability
Impact Assessment of Proposed WTO
Negotiations: Final Report for the Forest
Sector Study, Marko Katila and Markku Simula,
Savcor Indufor Oy, Finland, in association
with the Institute for Development Policy and
Management, University of Manchester, UK,
with financial assistance from the Commission
of the European Communities, 19 June 2005
http://www.sia-trade.org/wto/final%20report%20page.shtml
[6] Worldwide, some 60 million indigenous
people are almost completely reliant on
forest resources for their livelihoods – for
food and fuel, medicines and materials.
Almost 40 million people are involved in
fisheries globally and 90 percent of these
are employed in small-scale artisanal
fishing,
For further details see FoEI’s The Tyranny
of Free Trade: wasted natural wealth and lost
livelihoods, December 2005,
http://www.foei.org/publications/index.html
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