Keep the WTO out of the Earth Summit!

The real challenge the Earth Summit should be addressing is how to provide a decent quality of life for a predicted population of nearly 10 billion people in 2050, whilst reducing environmental impacts to sustainable levels. Since neoliberal economic globalisation is increasing the scale of that challenge by encouraging the pursuit of profit regardless of social and environmental costs, the Earth Summit should not be promoting the WTO’s controversial trade-liberalising agenda.

Instead the Earth Summit should be mapping out a path towards new and sustainable economies fit for the 21st century, with the promotion of food security, food sovereignty and non-intensive agriculture and the development of strong and effective multilateral environmental agreements high on the agenda.

If there is one aspect of Agenda 21 and current Earth Summit negotiations that is particularly counterproductive, it is governments’ continued, wholehearted and apparently unquestioning support for and inclusion of trade liberalisation. At a time when millions of people around the world are voicing growing concern about the social and environmental impacts of liberalisation – especially its impact on food production and rural economies – the apparent use of the Earth Summit to promote the WTO’s trade agenda strikes a thoroughly discordant note.

Many governments, especially in the North, consider trade liberalisation and economic globalisation to be over-riding priorities: the importance of issues such as sustainability, food security and safety and environmental protection take second place. This approach is based on an ideological belief that the free market can and will provide economic growth and, as a result, the wealth that governments believe is essential to funding sustainable development. Any measures that interfere with international trade – domestic environmental regulations, for example – are considered counterproductive.

In reality, however, neoliberal economic policies are failing people in many different ways. We live in a world in which inequality is on the increase and many millions are unable to meet even their most basic needs. Forests are being clear-cut, minerals strip-mined and fossil fuels exploited at completely unsustainable rates to provide resources for the global economy. Democracy is being eroded as power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Biological and cultural diversity are dwindling at an alarming rate. Hard won social and environmental standards are threatened.

To add to these problems, countries in the rich North, far from being greener, consume the majority of the world’s natural resources. The world’s poorest communities, on the other hand, are increasingly deprived of the resources they need. If we continue on this course, the prospects for both current and future generations seem grim. In short, the real challenge for humankind will be providing a decent quality of life for a predicted population of nearly 10 billion people in 2050, whilst reducing environmental impacts to sustainable levels. Neoliberal economic globalisation is increasing the scale of that challenge by encouraging the pursuit of profit regardless of social and environmental costs.

However, Friends of the Earth believes that a different, democratic, equitable and sustainable future is within our grasp. To this end, the Earth Summit could and should be mapping out a path towards new and sustainable economies fit for the 21st century.

Governments participating in the Earth Summit should not be promoting the WTO’s trade-liberalising agenda. Instead they should be tackling the impact of trade liberalisation on inequality and over-consumption; and focusing on the development and promotion of participatory, equitable and sustainable policies that support local needs, economies and communities around the world.

Governments must refocus their attention on food security, food sovereignty and non-intensive agriculture – critically important for many millions of people around the world. They also need to protect the status of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) – agreed by governments over past decades and now threatened by the WTO – and find ways to improve those MEAs that have been watered down by corporate interests.

Key steps to be taken by governments in the run up to and during the World Summit on Sustainable Development must therefore include the following:

• Removing all references to the WTO’s Doha negotiating agenda from the Earth Summit text and agreeing to a full and independent review of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in view of concerns about the impact of trade liberalisation on equity and sustainability.
• Rejecting export-led development in favour of participatory, equitable and sustainable policies that support local needs, economies and communities.
• Promoting food security, food sovereignty and non-intensive agriculture as key issues that governments need to address in the United Nations.
• Safeguarding multilateral treaties on the environment from free trade rules and corporate interference.
• Improving global governance structures in general including though strengthening the UN Environment Programme, so that environmental, health and social policies are developed and implemented swiftly and effectively.
• Initiating the development of new economic and political policies that will lead to fair and sustainable economies fit for the 21st century.