FROM DOHA TO JOHANNESBURG
The World Trade Organization's new mandate raises a key question
for next year's UN World Summit on Sustainable Development: Who
will decide our common future?
By Victor Menotti, directing the Environment Programme of the
International Forum
on Globalisation
In November of 2001, trade ministers from 140 nations gathered
in Doha, Qatar to give the World Trade Organization (WTO) an historic
new mandate that could intensify the burning of fossil fuels, the
logging of native forests, the depletion of fisheries, the use of
toxic chemicals, and the release of genetically-modified organisms.
Despite public opposition worldwide, WTO has obtained even more
powers than before, declaring itself the institution that will unilaterally
determine fundamental questions about the fate of planet's natural
systems and the billions of poor people who depend on them for survival.
Despite rhetoric about poverty alleviation and sustainable development,
the ministerial's official statement (known as the Doha declaration)
gives WTO new powers to restrain governments from regulating the
behavior of global corporations. By declaring itself the arbiter
of planetary natural resource crises (starting with fisheries) and
the fora for determining the relationship between conflicting international
agreements on trade and environment, the Doha agenda throws down
a direct challenge to preparations for the August 2002 United Nations
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg,
South Africa. Because the WTO protects the rights of global corporations
over all other arenas of peoples' sovereignty (from village meetings
to national parliaments, and now, apparently, even to other international
treaties), the Doha agenda is not only an attack on the poor and
the planet, but on the very idea of democracy itself.
WTO's new mandate covers questions whose answers will ultimately
define our common future. If left unchallenged, the question of
global governance will have been resolved by WTO's declaring itself
the arbiter of all things. The global corporations shaping WTO rules
will define the futures of countless small farmers, fisher peoples,
forest dwellers, indigenous peoples, and others whose survival depends
on access to, and control over, the natural resources that exist
in local commons worldwide. Threats to these traditional peoples'
sustainable livelihoods are inherent to the Doha agenda.
The Doha agenda has empowered WTO to:
+ increase corporate control over natural resources by allowing
decisions about their use to be driven even more closely by the
short-term demands of global financial markets;
+ intensify export-based farming, forestry, fishing, as well
as fossil fuels burning, mining, and other natural resource exploitation;
+ eliminate more conservation and community development policies
as unfair "barriers" to trade;
+ determine who captures the remnants of the world's collapsing
natural resources, starting with the planet's depleted fisheries;
+ subordinate multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) to
the rights of corporations enshrined in WTO rules.
AN ILLEGITIMATE PROCESS
The Doha agenda was the result of an illegitimate process made
possible by a number of factors, including the WTO's insulating
itself from the pressures of civil society in the ultimate "back
room": the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar, where US and EU trade
negotiators could focus on dividing and conquering what was well-organized
resistance from poor countries. Delegates from poor countries arrived
in Doha opposing any WTO expansion until problems with existing
WTO rules were first changed. They brought detailed lists of demands,
but the United States and the European Union largely dismissed them
to an "addendum" text that was made separate from the final statement.
A mysterious cocktail of promised favors and threatened aid packages,
all made in the new geopolitical context of post-September 11, played
an important role in neutralizing opposition to the US agenda. After
a marathon negotiating session that lasted until dawn, a handful
of "green men" (implying that the WTO's untransparent process of
using a so-called green room to forge consensus had now become even
more opaque) produced a final text. With most nations having no
option but to go along, the Doha deal was sealed. It is an indicting
commentary in itself to observe how the system of global corporate
rule embodied by WTO depends on using brutal negotiating tactics
and bullying weary delegates.
Below is a breakdown of the Doha Ministerial's final declaration
by:
I. New Mandates: An Anti-Sustainable Development Agenda
- Trade & Environment: Subordinating multilateral environmental
agreements (MEAs);
- Market Access: Global Agreements on Free Logging, Fishing, and
Mining;
- Anti-Dumping: When cheap imports kill;
- Subsidies: Can WTO be trusted with the world's fisheries?
II. Disputed Mandates: The "Singapore" Issues
- Investment: Return of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI);
- Government Procurement: Losing control over how to spend tax-dollars;
- Competition: Breaking up publicly-owned enterprises, not global
monopolies
I. NEW MANDATES: AN ANTI-SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA
Trade and Environment: Subordinating multilateral environmental
agreements (MEAs)
In perhaps the WTO's most direct threat to sustainable development
and the entire Rio/Johannesburg process, the final Doha declaration
expands the WTO's mandate to unilaterally determine its relationship
to the trade sanctions that enforce multilateral environmental agreements.
MEAs with trade measures include:
- the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Chemicals;
- the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change;
- the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES);
- the Basel Convention on the Trade in Hazardous Waste;
- the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (GMOs); and
- the POPs Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants.
When taken in the context of the trade ministers' instructions
for negotiations, the Doha mandate to "clarify" the relationship
between two international systems of law can only be understood
as a move to subordinate multilateral environmental agreements to
the rights of corporations enshrined in WTO. As specified in the
Doha declaration, negotiations will take place under WTO auspices,
with:
- Trade, not Environment, Ministers leading negotiations;
- MEA Secretariats being given only "observer" status, apparently
so they can watch while the treaties they administer are eviscerated;
- No "prejudged" outcomes. Although later in the text it deems
that the outcomes "shall not add to or diminish the rights and
obligations of Members under existing WTO agreements," which would
seem to imply that, since no trade rules can be changed, then
it can only be the MEAs that will be modified.
Clashes between the two bodies of international law have become
increasingly apparent, and trade minister want to "resolve" the
conflicts before any real troubles erupt. Consider:
The Convention on Biological Diversity's Biosafety Protocol
contradicts with WTO rules on what governments can do to regulate
GMOs. Where the MEA says governments have the right to ban imports
of GMOs if they suspect damaging impacts, the WTO's Agreement on
Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures restricts governments from
taking such precautionary measures if they do not have conclusive
scientific evidence of harm.
The Kyoto Protocol's implementation via increasing the
required fuel efficiency of autos in some nations has been threatened
with WTO challenges on the grounds that such measures would "discriminate"
against imports;
The Convention on the Law of the Sea's so-called Straddling
Stocks Treaty (to protect migratory fish species, the direct
result of a call made at the Rio Earth Summit) was been thrown in
question when the European Union threatened Chile with a WTO challenge
for blocking Spanish ships from landing swordfish that had been
caught in violation of the treaty.
The Basel Convention on the Trade in Hazardous Waste, which
encourages domestic handling of toxic materials before exporting
them, has been under scrutiny for violating NAFTA investment rules
that are now being proposed in WTO.
For anyone who believed that free trade rules would never directly
threaten the process of international environmental policymaking,
Doha should not be read as simply a smoking gun, but a declaration
of war. The Johannesburg process will be a critical vehicle to challenge
the WTO's attempt at usurping global governance.
Market Access
WTO's market access agenda combines two dangerous impacts that
undermine natural resource conservation and sustainable livelihoods:
1) the expansion of exports to wasteful consumers; 2) the elimination
of legal protections that ensure sustainable natural resource use
and local communities who depend on them. The forestry, fishing,
farming, sectors are particularly impacted. Negotiations are broken
down by the elimination of tariffs (import taxes) and so-called
Non Tariff Measures, or NTMs.
1. Eliminating Tariffs
Forest tariffs were an issue of great concern to protesters in
Seattle, as ministers had prepared to finalize a deal that week.
Popularly known as the Global Free Logging Agreement," forest conservationists
succeeded in getting the USTR to publish its first ever environmental
assessment of trade liberalization, released just before the 1999
Ministerial. In the report, which was done by a timber industry-funded
group, trade officials buried the real findings: tariff reductions
would result in increased logging in some of the world's most threatened
original forests inhabited by indigenous peoples. Cutting tariffs
reduces wood prices for consumers, in turn stimulating more wasteful
consumption, especially in the rich nations where tariffs are highest.
WTO tariff elimination could undermine efforts to reduce wood and
other resource consumption, a priority identified by the 1992 UN
Rio Earth Summit. Yet the Johannesburg preparatory report by the
UN Secretary-General hails the WTO's Doha agenda a "success."
Lowering tariffs in the absence of adequate safeguards for marine
ecosystems and fisher peoples could accelerate the death spiral
of the world's fish stocks and fishing communities. Although the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports increasingly dire news
about dwindling stocks, no assessment has been done on the health
impacts on fish stocks that are being prioritized for tariff elimination.
Nor has anyone even consulted the fishing communities themselves,
such as the National Forum of Fishers in India, or the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen's Associations in the US, about what issues
they want addressed in trade policy. It seems the only ones who
are aware of the WTO fisheries agenda are the very importers, processors,
and distributors who are drive the trade agenda for market access
via WTO.
In addition to forest and fish products, tariff cuts are being
discussed for minerals, fuels, chemicals, and other "non-agricultural
products." Without any clue as to the impacts of expanding trade
in these controversial commodities, the WTO is putting the planet's
future at risk.
2. Eliminating Non Tariff Measures (NTMs)
NTMs are considered to be any government measure, policy, or practice
that has the effect of "distorting" trade. Fishing NTMs can include
measures such as harvesting restrictions, bans on destructive gear,
embargoes on species suspected of disease or illness, residency
requirements (fish here, live here), or even ecolabels. APEC has
already surveyed the various NTMs in Pacific Rim markets, with a
view to taking it to WTO as a framework for negotiations on market
access. Governments have yet to make the APEC NTM report public,
as it could reveal a laundry list of regulatory measures being targeted
for elimination via WTO negotiations.
Forest NTMs are also broadly defined as any measure that "distorts"
trade. Even measures that have a "potential" to impact trade, such
as ecolabels, are under the WTO microscope. APEC has inventoried
so-called NTMs in the forestry, and other sectors throughout the
34 nations of the Pacific Rim. The USTR plans to also use this laundry
list as a "negotiating framework" for market access talks in Geneva.
In the midst of Seattle's teargas and police riots, forest activists
managed to extract a written commitment from the White House that
forest conservation measures would be defended in trade negotiations.
Not only does the Bush White House need to follow through with that
promise but other governments need to take up similar positions,
less of cross-deregulation that will "discipline" everything from
harvesting restrictions to residency requirements to endangered
species protections.
The NTM agenda is the final push to remove all government control
from regulating natural resources like fisheries, where any policy
objective, such as conservation or community development, is made
subservient to expanding trade.
Anti-Dumping: When Cheap Imports Kill
It is no secret that the international trading system is currently
seeing a proliferation of complaints about dumping, which is the
practice of exporting a product at a price lower than it can be
produced. As global recession deepens, nations are intensifying
their promotion of exports to keep their economies afloat. In reaction,
importing nations are imposing tariffs and quotas (so-called anti-dumping
measures) to control the flood of cheap products that are driving
domestic producers out of business. But WTO sets strict rules on
what measures governments can take, and under what conditions, to
stem the tide of damaging imports.
The Doha declaration set forth negotiations "aimed at clarifying
and improving disciplines" under the WTO Agreements on Subsidies
and Countervailing Measures, aka, the Anti-Dumping Agreement. Although
heavily pushed in Doha by developing nations who are frustrated
with US attempts to block imports of steel and textiles, small producers
in many nations (especially the poorest) will be the victims of
stronger WTO rules that prevent nations from regulating imports.
While loathed as "protectionist" by free traders (indeed, the thrust
of the Doha declaration's opening paragraph is to "reject the use
of protectionism") anti-dumping measures are also sometimes necessary
for protecting the livelihoods of the poor and ecologically sustainable
practices. Though today's anti-dumping headlines focus on the conflicts
in steel and textiles, other commodities and natural resources are
experiencing similar crises.
From forestry to fisheries to farming, millions of people around
the world whose survival depends on directly accessing natural resources
(for their own subsistence or for small-scale production) are threatened
by cheap imports. Compared to industrial, export-oriented production,
many of these small-scale producers employ traditional management
practices that distribute resources more equitably and are more
sustainable for natural systems.
Forestry: First Nations peoples of Canada, small mill workers
in the US, salmon, grizzlies, and forest ecosystems across North
America are just some of the victims of Canada's dumping softwood
lumber in the US market. With few laws regulating destructive forestry
practices and public land timber available at below market cost,
it is easy to see why Canada supplies one-third of US consumption.
US efforts to limit Canadian imports are now being challenged at
WTO by Canada. The logic of free trade becomes even more twisted
if one follows the patterns of international trade. Japan's oldest
and largest forest products producer, the Tajima Company, is about
to be driven under by cheap imports from the US. Owner ShintaroTajima
says he can no longer deliver logs to Tokyo harbor cheaper than
those arriving by ship from Seattle, where exporting logs across
the Pacific is made profitable only by subsidized transport costs.
Fishing: From Sri Lanka to California, fishing communities
who practice sustainable harvesting methods are threatened by cheap
imports. Sri Lankan fisher people can no longer sell their products
since import barriers were lifted to allow industrial trawlers from
other Asian nations to flood local markets. Salmon fishermen along
the Pacific Coast of the US can not compete with imports of farmed
salmon from Chile, where export aquaculture that chews up coastal
habitat and requires massive chemical inputs, is being fought by
local artisinal fishermen, indigenous peoples, workers, and conservationists.
The expansion of global trade and investment overseen by WTO has
created a crisis in rural communities everywhere, as fluctuating
commodity prices destabilize communities and make impossible long-term
planning for natural resources. For this reason, some nations are
exploring the option of reviving international commodity agreements
outside of WTO. The steel industry is currently taking the lead,
and it may prove a valuable lesson for other sectors. Regardless
of how these experiments turn out, trade rules need to give communities
and nations the right to do whatever is necessary to protect livelihoods
and sustainable practices.
Subsidies for Fisheries
This item on the Doha agenda, which at first glance may appear
innocuous if not helpful, could turn out to be the tip of a corporate
iceberg bound for capturing the remnants of the planet's collapsing
resources. While governments absolutely need to cut subsidies and
reduce overcapacity in the fishing industry (too many boats chasing
too few fish), the WTO is not the appropriate venue to handle this
subject. Letting a trade body, whose main constituents are global
trading firms and not people tied to the land and sea, decide which
subsidies are allowable almost ensures that what happened to small
farmers under WTO's last round will now be repeated with the world's
small fishers.
Beyond WTO's well-documented history of cutting subsidies for the
poor while further enriching the rich, the true WTO agenda for fisheries
subsidies is revealed by who has been at the table in the discussion
to date. Attempts by national networks of fisher peoples organizations
to get to the table have been ignored, while the US trade association
of importers, processors, and distributors (the National Fisheries
Institute) has long been an official advisor to US trade negotiators.
Few NGOs wanted to give the WTO anything that would expand its powers
over new areas of policy making, let alone allow WTO to greenwash
its image. Yet that is exactly the spin out of Doha, as WTO claims
a "win-win" for trade and environment. The World Wildlife Fund seemed
to play the leading role in putting fisheries subsidies on the WTO
agenda, despite being informed repeatedly of the concerns of small
fishermen's organizations.
The Doha text inserts the subject of fisheries subsidies under
the section calling for the strengthening of the Agreements on Subsidies
and Countervailing Measures (Anti-Dumping). But it has no explicit
conservation mandate, nor even an imlpied one. Indeed, its only
specific directive is the "taking into account the importance of
this sector to developing countries," which likely signals an orientation
toward maximizing exports of fish products from poor countries,
where, not coincidentally, rich countries are increasingly investing
in fisheries because they have over-fished their own territories.
Subsides disciplines via WTO is a subject also being considered
by other natural resource industries, including forestry. The US
forest industry has already asked the American government to document
the role of subsidies in the global industry, building the case
that other nations enjoy an unfair advantage. Depending on how the
fisheries subject develops, other industries may be encouraged or
discouraged from introducing their agenda into WTO. One can compare
it to asking hedge fund managers to design a new architecture for
global finance. This prospect is precisely the danger of giving
the WTO new mandates to sort out ecological crises that have been
the direct results of export-oriented development policies.
II. DISPUTED MANDATES (THE SINGAPORE ISSUES)
Commonly known by the name of the place where rich nations first
forced these issues onto the WTO agenda (the 1996 WTO Ministerial
in Singapore), the official negotiating status the so-called Singapore
issues was unclear when trade ministers left Doha, and still no
resolution is within sight. The Singapore issues include investment
(i.e., the MAI), competition, government procurement, and trade
facilitation). If negotiation of these issues is recognized as officially
launched, the WTO may be able to prevent citizens from using their
governments to regulate foreign investment or to channel tax dollars
toward poverty alleviation and conserving natural systems. Liberating
global capital from serving the needs of people and nature would
represent the ultimate triumph for the world trade body whose very
mission is to exclude civil society from shaping economic systems.
If taken, these decisions would have great influence over the outcomes
of Johannesburg, as both private investment and public spending,
two key sources of financing development
Investment: Return of the MAI
Currently, governments have the legal right (although not always
the political leverage or will) to channel inward investment toward
national development goals. These can include the nurturing domestic
industries, poverty alleviation programs, reinvesting profits domestically,
or long-term planning of natural resource management. A WTO investment
agreement is aimed at constraining these abilities of governments
to control foreign capital. Capital controls are a necessary element
of any sustainable development agenda. People need to retain the
ability to control foreign direct investment (FDI) because global
corporations are not guided by principles of sustainable development.
Rather they are oriented toward satisfying the high expectations
of unaccountable global investors. Global investors want to use
WTO to take away people's power use their governments to capture
benefits from inward investment.
Government Procurement
The goods and services governments purchase are a key source of
many nations' community empowerment programs, green purchasing guidelines,
and labeling requirements. In some nations, government procurement
can make up as much as two-thirds of GDP, so WTO disciplines over
the way tax-dollars are spent can be a powerful way for corporations
to penetrate new markets. The WTO Government Procurement talks are
aimed at reducing the voice that citizens have over how their taxes
are spent, such as purchasing recycled paper or natural gas vehicles,
or contracting services with low-income communities. Policy tools
for achieving ecologically sustainable, equitable development could
become violations of WTO rules if this agenda item proceeds.
Competition
It could be useful if WTO lived up to its free trade principles
and addressed the monopolistic practices of global corporations.
But instead talks on "anti-competitive" measures will target public
and private-owned entities that limit foreign competition in domestic
markets. Critics fear that WTO's effort will only result in global
corporations' deeper penetration into local markets of developing
nations, further concentrating global corporate control over economies.
CONCLUSIONS
The Doha deal may some day come to be known as a declaration of
silent war against the rights of people and the planet. It threatens
poor peoples' access to and control over the very resources upon
which their survival depends, deepening the spiral of exclusion
that drives so many into insecurity and desperation. There is talk
in the WSSD preparatory process of striking a "Global Deal" in Johannesburg.
Any meaningful deal would have to initiate a people-driven process
to transform international economic institutions. Otherwise, decision
taken under WSSD will be undermined by the WTO, IMF, World Bank,
and the global corporations they serve.
While the cheerleaders of global free trade spin Doha's outcomes
as a victory in the global war on poverty, and remain "convinced
that trade and environment policies can and must be mutually supportive,"
the contradictions between the Doha and Johannesburg agendas become
increasingly clear. WTO's mission of removing government, which
is supposed to be the expression of popular will, aims run counter
to the original mission of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. With the very
real prospect of global governance being usurped by transnational
corporations via WTO, civil society must use the Johannesburg process
as a vehicle to defy the Doha agenda and intensify challenges to
today's global economic institutions. Regardless of the WSSD's official
outcomes, the peoples' process, as in Seattle, will and must ultimately
replace WTO with a truly democratic system that values life over
money, and the rights of people over the rights of corporations.
Far from being finalized, global civil society's response to the
Doha agenda has already been launched: grassroots organizations
around the world will be using the UN World Summit on Sustainable
Development as an organizing vehicle to beat back the Doha agenda.
The Johannesburg's "peoples' process" will be just one of a number
of convergences required to replace WTO's bid for a corporate utopia
with an international citizen's agenda that protects the poor and
the planet. If not, Doha will be known as a pivotal point in history
where global governance was truly usurped.
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