Index

Expert Opinion: It's Time to Make the Global Debate Local

By Ambassador K.G. Anthony Hill

The barriers had already been breached. It was left to the youthful, sometimes organized non-governmental groups to administer the coup de grace. To the rootsy, rocking reggae beat of Bob Marley, down came the Berlin Wall in 1989. The era of NGO activism was in full swing. “Seattle” was still to come.

It was a decade earlier that the quickly congealing Washington Consensus of privatization, liberalization and “outing” the State had bullied its way into the consciousness of the South. The transnationalization of business was opening markets, expanding its networks of consumers.

The pressure of North-centred NGO idealism and realism had moved the U.S. Congress to pressure the World Bank to pay attention to the environment in its client countries. Notwithstanding, one of the Bank’s senior officers with the cold logic of the sinecured bureaucrat, observed that the trade-off for growth was a certain degree of environmental degradation and pollution.

Transnational business, it seemed, was not perturbed. No pressure from them on Congress. After all, they were the beneficiaries of substantial business in environment-related investment projects, through OECD export credits and multilateral financing. The sums in transacting cross-border trade and project design and construction are quite substantial. More to the point, a significant percentage is in areas that are quite definitely environmentaffecting, energy-intensive projects.

There is no gainsaying that the spread of lessthan- safe-and-friendly environmental technology and the rise in greenhouse gases have increased ambient temperatures around the world with adverse effects felt mainly in poor countries.

It was finally at the World Trade Organization (WTO) that these two “interests” met. One to press for negotiations on trade in services; and the other to press for trade and environment. Irresistible! The negotiators from developed countries, yielding to their often-contending constituencies, secured consensus for the agenda. When the city-named negotiations of “green” Seattle and “Neanderthal” Cancun “failed,” the innovative politico-bureaucrats remained with “Development” Doha as the promise of rule-making and market opening.

How can the intellectual playing field be levelled? How can developing country negotiators navigate the tributaries of issues complicated by design? What specifically can be done to rescue the WTO-centred economic enterprise of international trade as it is besieged from within and without? And how do we make sense of the seamless connections between production of goods; delivery of goods and services; the technologies of production and transport; the financing of trade; the effect of, and on the environment; and how all these are facilitated by institutions endowed with capacity?

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) embodies principles that are indispensable for civilized discourse among materially unequally endowed partners. Who would wish to “negotiate” binding commitments, if there is no firm expectation that the word is as good as a bond and the agreement is law, binding on all parties and administered with equity? The principles of national treatment and non-discrimination are tempered, as always, by equity; the recognition of “infant industry”; “exceptions”; “safeguards”; and “special and more favourable treatment for developing countries.”

The objectives of full employment, the optimum use of all resources (and here I include “human,” though not to be equated to a barrel of oil), sustainable development and conditions of competition are certainly ones to be anchored. The problem arises when interests push so hard and fast that the dynamic equilibrium of wealth-generating, welfare-enhancing international trade and finance is so disturbed that inequity results.

The generic term “South” was always contrived. When equated with “Third,” the die was cast. Thus was lumbered the “Third World.” So too, the term “developing countries.” These terms have outlived their utility. At the same time, where is the serious, practical collaboration among developing countries in general, South- South cooperation? Where is the collaboration and involvement of all their stakeholders in a focused way, and with the fulsome support of their heads of government and state?

The governments of developing countries and their private sectors, NGOs, academics and citizens should be more intensively engaged among themselves in the unfolding negotiations on the inter-related environment-facilitating measures for trade. The technical assistance and capacity building of the WTO, delivered by a Secretariat, can be self-serving and counterproductive. There is a pressing need for local circumstances to be the basis for information and knowledge driving their negotiating positions.

There is clear and indisputable evidence that efficient trade facilitation is welfare-enhancing. There is equally clear evidence that the pollution from road, air and sea transport bears heavily on the environment. As negotiations on trade facilitation take place under the Doha mandate, it is also clear that without fulfillment of trade-facilitation supplyside commitments, it will be difficult for developing countries to meet their end of the bargain and secure the balance of benefits from the negotiations.

The WTO dispute resolution mechanisms, their operation and their decisions—so hugely oversold—are fast becoming instruments of inequity, in defiance of common sense, and of the values and principles of its predecessor, the GATT. Can there be any doubt that unchecked, the present practices will taint, even distort, production and trading patterns? The adjudication of any likely disputes in the field of trade facilitation could be quite interesting. Is it premature to consider what these might be? Could one be the failure to fulfill the commitments for infrastructure, or technical assistance?

Both technology and finance are critical components of all trade. However, note their differential treatment in the present agenda. They are not integral to the ongoing negotiations. The Committees on the Transfer of Technology and Trade and Finance are study groups, with little chance of their findings making their way into the rules of rights and obligations. This lack of seamlessness does not seem to make sense.

The question arises whether the negotiations on both market access commitments and rules on environmental goods and services will contribute to improving the environment in general and the specific objectives of sustainable development.

The conventional lens of “North-South” negotiations at the multilateral level is clearly not one that is likely to lead to optimum productive results across the board. The increasing number of regional trade agreements is now in the same order of magnitude as multilateral environmental agreements. Trade-related environmental solutions may well have to be dealt with more at the regional level, if the desired welfare benefits from trade liberalization are to be realized. The trade impact assessment tools and Agenda 21 principles must therefore be used.

An important consideration will be the institutional arrangements that will accompany these increased regional arrangements. Establishing a World Environment Organization would be overkill. It would only add layers of non-productive bureaucracies, detracting from the necessary focus at the national and regional level.

No. The answer is not to overload the carrying capacity of the international organizational landscape with more and more politicobureaucracies, which, in turn, become purveyors of their own agendas while developing countries continue to be mesmerized by policy dialogues and other buzzwords emanating from outside their societies.

It may well be that the WTO itself should scale back its ambitions.

Ambassador K.G. Anthony Hill, from Jamaica, is a seasoned trade negotiator and was his country’s former Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.