ISIS Report, 20 March 2002
Rough Road from Doha to Johannesburg
WTO's new mandate raises a key question: Who will decide our common
future?
The new mandate could intensify burning fossil fuels, logging native
forests, depleting fisheries, use of toxic chemicals, and release of
GMOs.
Victor Menotti, Director of the International Forum on Globalisation
Environment Program gives us a critical analysis.
Trade ministers from 140 nations gathered in Doha, Qatar last November
to
give the World Trade Organization (WTO) a historic new mandate to
restrain
governments from regulating global corporations, removing the last
shreds
of people s rights to self determination and access to resources at
every
level. It is the biggest threat to the agenda for the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg (Rio plus Ten).
The Doha agenda (Box 1) has empowered the WTO to increase corporate
control
over natural resources by allowing decisions on their use to be driven
even
more closely by the short-term demands of global financial markets. It
intensifies export-based farming, forestry, fishing, as well as fossil
fuel
burning, mining, and exploitation of other natural resources including
water. It eliminates more conservation and community development
policies
as unfair trade barriers. It determines who captures the remnants of the
world s collapsing natural resources, starting with the planet s
depleted
fisheries, which has been placed on the WTO agenda by World Wildlife
Fund.
It subordinates multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs, Box 2) to
the
rights of corporations.
The Doha agenda was the result of an illegitimate, manipulative,
untransparent and deceitful process. The result was to leave all the
concerns and demands of the majority developing countries off the main
agenda and relegated to an addendum text (see "Deceit and manipulation
at
Doha", Science in Society 13/14, February 2002).
Box 1
The Doha Agenda
New mandates were added to the final declaration:
Trade and environment - subordinates multilateral environmental
agreements
to trade.
Market Access - to free logging, fishing and mining.
Anti-Dumping may allow cheap imports to kill local industries and
livelihoods.
Subsidies for fisheries may prevent protection of collapsing fisheries
The disputed mandates, the Singapore issues were also included:
Investment - return of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, that
effectively forbids governments to protect local investments against
corporations.
Government procurement - effectively disables governments from
controlling
how the tax-dollars are spent.
Competition - breaks up publicly-owned enterprises, not global
monopolies.
The MEAs include
Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Chemicals
Kyoto Protocol on Climate change
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
Basel Convention on Trade in Hazardous Waste
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
POPs Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants
The new mandates
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. The Doha mandate to
clarify the relationship between trade and environment can only be
understood as a move to subordinate the MEAs to trade. Trade and not
environment ministers are leading the negotiations, and the MEAs
secretariats are given only observer status. Although it is stated that
there shall be no prejudged outcomes , it is also stated that the
outcomes
"shall not add to or diminish the rights and obligations of Members
under
existing WTO agreement". This can only mean that no trade rules can be
changed. The precautionary approach will go out of the window.
Market access will mean the expansion of exports and the elimination of
legal protections that ensure sustainable use of natural resources.
Particularly affected are forestry, fishing and farming. Negotiations
are
over the elimination of tariffs (import taxes) and so-called non-tariff
measures.
Forest tariffs were an issue of great concern to protestors at Seattle.
Popularly known as the global Free Logging Agreement, forest
conservationists succeeded in getting the US Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick to publish the first, ever, environmental assessment of trade
liberalisation, released just before the 1999 Ministerial. In the
report,
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. The effects on
cutting tariffs in fisheries are similar. Tariff cuts for minerals,
fuels,
chemicals and other non-agricultural products are also being discussed.
Non-tariff measurements are being defined as any measure that distorts
trade. These include harvesting restrictions, ban on destructive gear,
embargoes on species suspected of disease, residency requirements, or
even
eco-labels, or labelling on GMOs.
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.
From forestry to fisheries to farming, millions whose survival depends
on
direct access to natural resources are threatened by cheap imports.
Anti-dumping agreements are key to protecting them.
The item subsidies for fisheries may appear innocuous, but could turn
out
to be the thin end of the wedge for corporations to capture the remnants
of
the planet s collapsing resources. WTO has a well-documented history of
cutting subsidies for the poor while giving further to the rich.
Attempts
by national networks of fisher peoples organisation 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
any opportunity to expand its powers over new areas of policy making.
The
world wildlife fund seemed to have played the leading role in putting
fisheries subsidies on the WTO agenda, despite being warned repeatedly
of
the concerns of small fishermen s organisations.
The Doha text inserts the subject of fisheries subsidies under the
section
calling for strengthening the Agreements on Subsidies and Countervailing
Measures (Anti-Dumping). But it has no explicit conservation mandate,
nor
even an implied one. Indeed, its only specific directive is the "taking
into account the importance of this sector to developing countries,"
which
likely signals an orientation towards maximising 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.
The Singapore issues
Singapore was the place where rich nations first forced these issues
onto
the WTO agenda (1996 Ministerial in Singapore). If these issues are
accepted onto the WTO agenda, it would mean the WTO could prevent
citizens
from using governments to regulate foreign investment, or to channel tax
dollars towards 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.
Investment: Currently governments have the legal right to channel inward
investment towards national development goals. These can include
nurturing
domestic industries, poverty alleviation programs, reinvesting profits
domestically or long-term planning of natural resource management. WTO
agreement is aimed at constraining these abilities of governments to
control foreign capital. They are oriented towards satisfying the high
expectations of unaccountable global investors.
Government procurement: The goods and services governments purchase are
a
key source of many nations community empowerment programs, green
purchasing
guidelines, and labelling requirements. In some nations, government
procurement can make up as much as two-thirds of GDP. The WTO talks are
aimed at reducing the choice 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. Policies for achieving
ecologically sustainable, equitable development could become violations
of
WTO rules.
Competition: This targets public and private enterprises that limit
foreign
competition in domestic markets. It does not address the monopolistic
practices of global corporations. 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. 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 finalised, global civil society s response to the Doha
agenda has already been launched: grassroots organisations around the
world
will be using the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development as an
organising 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 distopia 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.
(This article was abbreviated and edited by the Mae-Wan Ho. For the
complete version, visit International Forum for Globalisation website:
<http://www.ifg.org/>www.ifg.org)
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The Science Wars vol 1. Debating Scientists
The Science Wars vol 2. Civil Actions
The Science Wars vol 3. Suppressing Dissent
Transgenic Instability
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