May 26, 1998

UNEASY CO-EXISTENCE WITH ENVIRONMENT

 

Geneva, May 20 (IPS/Lewis Machipisa) - When the leaders of two of the world's biggest economies took to the podium here this week to address the WTO's Second Ministerial Meeting, both warned of the danger of expanding trade at the cost of the environment.

First was U.S. President William Clinton, who said Monday that enhanced trade could and should benefit -- not undercut -- the protection of the environment. Clinton called for a high-level meeting of trade and environment ministers to provide "strong direction and energy to the WTO's environmental efforts in the years to come" -- a suggestion made earlier by the European Commission. 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed similar sentiments on Tuesday. "Governments need to consider the environmental impact of everything they do, including in the trade sphere," he said. 

But environmental groups were not totally impressed. Such fine words, they feared, might mask inaction. History, they argued, was there to prove them right. 

"Lack of progress in the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment during the last four years has now been publicly acknowledged," said Sabina Voogd, in charge of Treaties and Conventions in Greenpeace International.

While appreciating what Clinton said, leaders of US environmental groups present in Geneva said strong rhetoric should not and could no longer hide fours years of weak trade policies on the environment. 

They complained that since its creation in 1995, the WTO had consistently undermined legitimate environmental protections and frequently ignored its own charter which specifically allows nations to protect natural resources.

Greenpeace International and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Wednesday urged immediate action by the Clinton administration and others governments to fix the trade organisation's perceived bias against environmental protections. 

"We will be looking for concrete results within the next six months on increased transparency and environmental reform at the WTO," said Voogd. 

And the WWF urged the European Union to back the United States as an indispensable first step towards genuine environmental reform in the WTO. "We call on Mr Blair, who made the environment number one priority for the WTO, to join the U.S. in encouraging other WTO member states to support these transparency proposals," said Charles Arden-Clarke, head of WWF's trade and investment unit. 

The other crucial test, noted Arden-Clarke, will be following up the proposal to hold a high-level meeting on trade and environment, suggested by the U.S. and the European Union. "This high-level meeting must happen in the next six months," he said. 

NGO representatives said the US and the EU must seek wider support within the WTO for that initiative otherwise the NGOs would not believe their sincerity. And they emphasised the need for any further moves towards trade liberalisation in the WTO to be accompanied by simultaneous environmental assessments, focusing also on ecologically sensitive sectors such as agriculture and fisheries. 

"The proposed reforms will be meaningless unless environmental concerns are fully integrated into the WTO mainstream activities," stressed Voogd. "NGOs will oppose further liberalisation efforts in the WTO until such policy integration is implemented." 

Maybe when this is done Cuba's President Fidel Castro will get his wish, which he expressed here on Tuesday, for "orderliness in our chaotic world so that nature is not destroyed; so that oceans, the rivers and the atmosphere are no longer poisoned, the ground does not lose its topsoil, the deserts do not continue to expand and forests do not disappear... for the climate not to change and the 10 billion population we'll have in just 50 more years not to perish from hunger and diseases."