Southern Agenda on Trade & Environment

The Southern Agenda project is jontly implemented by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the Regional International Networking Group (RING), who in early 2002 launched the second phase of the Southern Agenda on Trade and Environment. The project aims to strengthen the capacity of trade negotiators, key national policymakers, and regional actors in developing countries to determine priorities for promoting and negotiating proactive positions, which reflect their own 'Southern Agenda' on environment and trade in the multilateral trading system.

The first phase of the project had sought to gather and present Southern perspectives on the trade and environment link. It built on extensive consultations with developing country trade policy representatives in Geneva, and compiled a comprehensive matrix of developing country and least-developed country proposals on trade and environment submitted thus far to the WTO. The results of Phase I were presented at the WTO Symposium on The Doha Development Agenda and Beyond in May 2002.

Phase II, which builds upon the results of Phase I, focuses on the Doha negotiating mandate on trade and environment, including not only the specific environment mandate in paragraphs 31 and 32 of the Declaration, but the environment-related aspects of all negotiating areas. The project objectives to achieve its overarching goal of building capacity for developing countries on trade and environment issues at the WTO are:

• Identify regional/national priorities, and cutting-edge research needed to support negotiation and policy-making in the context of multilateral negotiations on trade and environment through participation in regional expert consultations among policy-makers and other key actors in selected developing regions,
  
  
• Support linkages among regional stakeholders and negotiators from developing countries through informal consultation with Geneva delegates, to ensure that regional interests on trade and environment are taken into account at multilateral trade negotiations and concerns of non-policymakers;
  
  
• To strengthen the capacity of developing country trade negotiators, policy makers, academics, and civil society through the development of a trade and environment negotiations resource book as a tool to facilitate informed participation in negotiations and policy decision-making processes;
  
  
• To inform and influence a broad range of key stakeholders at the regional and international level, in particular Geneva-based trade negotiators, Ministries of environment, agriculture, trade, foreign affairs, regional NGOs, academia, private sector and trade policy influencers through analysis and dissemination of the project results.

Project Activities

The project is being carried out over a two-year period, and is based on six multi-stakeholder expert consultations in developing country regions that aim to bring forward regional priorities in trade and environment. The consultations will both feed into and run parallel to a Geneva-based consultation process involving WTO negotiators, in order to ensure that regional environmental priorities are reflected at the multilateral level. The first three regional consultations were (or will be) held in 2003 and early 2004, for the regions of West Africa, South America, South and Southeast Asia, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Northeast Asia.

A major research outputs:

1. The Trade and Environment Resource Book is a practical reference tool and guide for negotiators and policymakers, and other interested actors, in order to help them understand the emerging 'Southern Agenda' and options in trade and environment and its relation to sustainable development, thereby facilitating informed participation in negotiations and decision-making processes. The book will have a series of critical trade and environment topics contributed from the foremost experts from the south and north on the specific trade and environment issues pertinent to the Doha negotiations and the work programme of the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE). It will contain handy factual information on legal regimes and data on relevant economic sectors, trade flows and barriers as well as it will link the work programme of the CTE with the Rio Principles, Agenda 21, and the Plan of Implementation agreed at Johannesburg 2002.
   
   
2. The Resource Book will be supplemented with a consolidated distillation of research results from the consultations, entitled Envisioning a Sustainable Development Agenda for Trade and Environment. This output is conceived of as an anthology of some of the relevant material produced as part of the project plus original analysis that brings together the learning from the project as a whole. It will be designed and published as a book accessible to practitioners as well as scholars. The document will reflect the learning from the various research components of the project, including: (a) the regional consultations, (b) the regional background papers, (c) the regional 'Think Pieces', and (d) the Geneva-based consultations with trade negotiators. In addition, it will also aim to reflect upon the current state of the debate on trade and environment issues within policy and scholarly circles.

An Advisory Committee comprising high-level key trade delegates from Asia, Africa and Latin America provide valuable input on the dynamics and developments of the multilateral negotiations on environment and trade. The Committee members include:

Phase I

Ambassador Alejandro JARA, Permanent Mission of Chile
Ambassador Nathan IRUMBA, Permanent Mission of Uganda
Ambassador Munir AKRAM, formerly Permanent Mission of Pakistan

Phase II

Ambassador Toufiq ALI, Permanent Mission of Bangladesh, Chair of the CTE special session
Ambassador Amina Chawahir MOHAMED, Permanent Mission of Kenya.

The project is made possible through the generous support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Phase II Background Powerpoint Presentation - Adil Najam, Tufts University (large file)