WTO Cancun September meeting

Dear correspondent / editor,

The forthcoming Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), scheduled to take place 10-14 September, in Cancún, Mexico, will be one of the most important events of 2003.

Are you covering, or interested in, the WTO Cancun Ministerial and do you have a ‘travelling’ e-mail address that is different from this one? Or do you have the e-mail address of a colleague or correspondent who will be covering the ministerial?

If so, and if you or they would like to receive press releases and updates on negotiations from Friends of the Earth International, please hit the ‘reply’ button and send us these e-mail addresses.

We will have a team of over 40 campaigners from members groups worldwide who will be able to comment on virtually all aspects of the negotiations, both substantive and regional. Friends of the Earth International is one of the world’s largest grassroots environmental federations with 68 national member groups in as many countries and around one million individual members.

In Cancún, trade ministers from countries around the world hope to further their trade interests in ‘tit-for’tat’ trade offs. The winners of this process are likely to be large transnational corporations scouring the world in search of new resources and markets. The losers will be people and communities, small businesses and the environment.

Key concerns are that:

• The undemocratic WTO cements existing inequalities that favour rich countries over poor countries and promotes the interests of big business at the expense of people and their environment.
• The secretive WTO is trading away our environment and the rights of consumers, farmers and indigenous peoples, along with democratic policy and decision-making at the local, national and multilateral level.
• The powerful industrialized countries within the WTO, as well as multinational corporations, are pushing for a broad expansion of the WTO’s scope to include even more areas of our daily lives and government operations.

Friends of the Earth believes that the WTO mandate should not be expanded with ‘new issues’ such as investment, competition, and government procurement.

By the end of August, we will send you mobile phone numbers where you can reach Friends of the Earth specialists in Cancun, from as early as 3rd September.