7:01 AM Dec 16, 1993

ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT NGOS DEMUR

Geneva (TWN) -- A number of non-government organizations active in development and environment reacted Wednesday in decrying the outcome and its failures to benefit the developing countries or safeguard environment and sustainable development.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said the agreements as they stood would post a direct threat to conservation efforts around the world, and deal a serious setback to environment.

The international NGO, Greenpeace complained as it stood now, the outcome and the MTO seemed to have a "trade-at-all-costs" attitude. The MTO, it said, contained no binding commitment to integrating trade, environment and development policies. It also failed to adequately protect poor countries.

The Brussels based International Coalition for Development Action (ICDA), a broad umbrella group bringing several European development NGOs, said the multilateral rules that has resulted "are not balanced enough to secure sustainable development and trade centred to the development needs of the population, particularly those in the South".

The negotiation and decision-making practices had allowed the major trading powers to make unacceptable last-minute deals among themselves. During the whole of the negotiations, the developing countries had received insufficient possibility to safeguard their interests.

The poorest, and different least developed countries, would loose in areas such as agriculture (through higher food prices, and less support for poor farmers), intellectual property rights, in textiles where there is lack of increase export opportunities, services etc.

The negotiating mandates and advisers have been dominated by big corporate interests, ICDA said. Closer analysis of the benefits in areas such as agriculture, TRIPs and services showed that the gains will mainly accrue to the companies, whereas the Uruguay Round was unable to regulate their behaviour and discipline their restrictive business practices.

The OECD, ICDA underlined, admitted that trade should not be an end in itself.

"But the Uruguay Round and the MTO do not directly incorporate the principles of promoting food security and quality, poverty alleviation and rural development, employment, social equity, environmental sustainability, regulation of trading corporations and cultural diversity".

The media, ICDA complained, had been focusing on the unresolved differences between the EU and the USA, but has paid little attention about the interests of the other 100 negotiating parties.

The Press, ICDA said, should ask why the other negotiating parties had been given less a week to discuss and approve/reject the latest important deals made between the EC and US and what consensus or decision-making rule was applied here.

The ICDA also questioned whether the GATT secretariat's 3 December paper evaluating the outcome was a "sufficient implementation of the mandate of the Uruguay Round" in this regard.