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making sense of the wto doha
round negotiations
Trade talks might seem far away from our
lives, but they have a very real impact on
how we live and on our surrounding
environment. The current negotiations in the
World Trade Organization, the body that
governs world trade, could (if concluded)
increase pressure on our natural environment,
reduce impoverished countries’ ability to
develop, and affect the livelihoods of small
farmers and fisherfolk around the globe. They
could also reduce national governments’
ability to implement domestic laws and
regulations to protect the environment and
local jobs and promote health and safety.
The WTO’s ‘Doha’ negotiations (so called
because they were initiated at the WTO’s 4th
Ministerial in Doha, Qatar in 2001) focus on
agriculture, industrial products and raw
materials, services and intellectual property
rights (the ownership of ideas).
Industrialized countries promised developing
countries that the Doha ‘Work Program’ and
other trade negotiations would focus first
and foremost on development issues. In
reality, it is increasingly clear that the
negotiations threaten to undermine
development, the environment, and the
livelihoods and employment of tens of
millions of people. In addition, many
developing country proposals relating to
development (focusing on special and
differential treatment and implementation
issues) are being consistently ignored.
Because the talks cover so many areas they
are frequently difficult to follow, even for
trade negotiators themselves. This can put
many developing country governments, who have
only one trade negotiator present in Geneva,
in a very difficult position.
Governments tend to refer to the Doha
talks as a ‘round’ because all the
negotiations are supposed to be completed at
the same time (the idea is that countries’
losses in one sector will be made up by gains
in another). However, what this means in
practice is that countries are forced to make
trade-offs between different negotiating
areas. So developing countries might be
persuaded, for example, to open up sensitive
public service and natural resource-based
sectors if they thought it would bring export
opportunities in agriculture. In addition,
smaller countries are often put under extreme
pressure to liberalize in a range of sectors
that they do not want to open up.
A major problem with the WTO is its
decision-making process. In theory, decisions
are supposed to be made by consensus.
However, there is evidence of a great deal of
arm-twisting behind the scenes. More powerful
countries such as the EU, the US and Japan
exert whatever influence they can to open up
markets for powerful corporate lobbies based
in their countries. Furthermore, smaller
countries are often excluded from key
negotiations until the deals have been done,
and are expected to sign up afterwards.
Key aspects of the Doha round
include:
Non-Agricultural Market Access
(NAMA)
negotiations, which are
focused on reducing tariffs in all goods that
are not included in the agriculture
negotiations. NAMA includes proposals that
focus on natural resource-based sectors
including minerals, forest products and
fisheries.
Tariffs are the taxes countries place on
imports and exports. They provide a means for
developing countries to protect and promote
domestic industries and local employment
(especially since they cannot afford to do
this using subsidies). Tariffs help to
protect small farmers and fisherfolk who are
essential to local economies and societies
but may be unable to compete with huge
transnational corporations. Tariff cuts are
also likely to lead to increased forest
destruction across the globe, the further
depletion of dwindling fish stocks, and
increased mining.
NAMA negotiations may also be used to
restrict the ability of governments to
legislate and regulate at the national level.
Friends of the Earth International has
identified 212 laws and regulations relating
to the environment and health standards that
have been notified by governments as barriers
to trade.
The Agreement on Agriculture
(AOA)
tends to always be at the
centre of WTO negotiations as this is the key
sector in which developing countries think
they might gain something.
Most developing countries want more access
to markets in the EU and the US. At the WTO’s
2003 Ministerial in Cancun, a number of the
major developing countries united in a group
called the G20, which was strong enough to
resist pressure from the EU and the US and
insist that developing countries weren’t
being offered enough. This was an important
step, even though it has become increasingly
evident that the G20 consists of countries
with strong transnational agribusiness
interests (such companies are likely to be
the primary beneficiaries of increased
exports). The G20 includes Brazil and
India.
Many also want to use the negotiations to
ensure that their small farmers and rural
communities are protected. They want the EU
and US to reduce farming subsidies, and they
want to be able to use trade restrictions to
keep subsidized products out of their own
markets. Countries focusing on keeping
products out are grouped together in the G33,
coordinated by Indonesia. These countries are
less influential and more likely to find
themselves excluded from important
negotiations.
A further group consist of some of the
smallest countries that are worried that the
special trade agreements they already have
with particular partners could be eroded if
other developing countries start to get more
market access (this is known as ‘preference
erosion’).
The EU and the US want to lever open
developing country agricultural markets while
maintaining the huge subsidies they pay to
farmers in their own countries - most of
which go to agribusiness, not small farmers.
With hundreds of trade bureaucrats at their
side, the EU and US are often able to make it
look as if they are reforming their
agriculture policies when they are not making
any substantial changes.
The General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS)
negotiations are of
special interest because they relate to some
of the essential aspects of life: water,
energy, health and biodiversity (all of which
are proposed for market opening). Services
negotiations have proceeded very slowly
because many countries do not want to open up
these services, many of which are currently
publicly provided. In GATS, countries
currently have more flexibility about what
they are willing to negotiate on, although
the EU tried to reduce this flexibility by
requiring a set number of sub-sectors to be
included by each country. GATS also includes
negotiations on domestic regulation, which
could limit governments’ ability to implement
national policies.
The Trade Related aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
Agreement
is also up for review.
TRIPs works very much in favor of Northern
transnational corporations and was initially
included in the WTO’s agreements at the
insistence of the US. It obstructs people’s
access to essential medicines, seeds and
vital necessities, by increasing and even
introducing costs. It also promotes the
patenting of life forms, leading to the
destruction of biodiversity and the
appropriation of traditional knowledge.
African countries are currently seeking to
remove the TRIPs requirements relating to
patents on life (although their proposal does
not exclude from TRIPs all other forms of
intellectual property rights). A further
group of developing countries, led by India,
is also seeking amendments to the TRIPs
Agreement to prevent biopiracy, which would
allow developing countries to benefit
financially from the use of traditional
knowledge and biodiversity (although this
would not necessarily or automatically
conserve and protect that knowledge and
biodiversity).
Trade and the environment
is also a formal negotiating area in the Doha
Work Program. Paragraph 31(i) of the WTO Doha
Ministerial Declaration may allow the WTO to
set limits on the extent to and the way in
which governments can implement multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs). These
negotiations have so far been very technical,
but could nevertheless have extremely
important consequences for MEAs. The WTO
might limit the use of those trade measures
left to the discretion of MEA members.
Paragraph 32 of the WTO Declaration deals
with environmental goods and services.
Environmental goods are not yet defined, and
tend to focus on products that northern
corporations want to export. They could
include, for example, nuclear power plants
and waste incinerators. Environmental
services proposed for liberalization also
tend to focus on end-of-pipe technologies
only (pollution-abating technologies, for
example).
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