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The WTO Doha Round, launched in 2001, has reached a critical juncture. Ministers and high-level officials from three dozen countries are gathered in Geneva for talks to hammer out differences in key areas. The negotiations started on Monday, 21 July and will continue until Saturday, 26 July and most likely beyond - unless there is a complete breakdown earlier. The negotiations have been slow, and major Members have yet to narrow their divergences.
While discussions are narrowly focused on key areas of the negotiations - agricultural and industrial market access in particular - and environment is not officially on the agenda, the outcome will have direct and indirect implications for the environment and natural resources management.
Agriculture and industrial goods liberalisation continues to divide Members
The framework agreements on agriculture and industrial market access that ministers are aiming to reach this week would include formulae and figures that will determine countries’ future subsidy and tariff levels. These ‘modalities’ are a prerequisite for countries to draw up the tariff and subsidy schedules that would become their post-Doha WTO obligations.
In terms of main positions, developing countries continue to push the US to cut agricultural subsidies and the EU to improve market access, while developed countries want to see developing countries open up their industrial markets further. Within this general constellation, specificities abound. For example, smaller developing countries are concerned about the effects of preference erosion, and there are specific coalitions looking to shield special and sensitive agricultural goods from the full force of liberalisation. The US made a revised offer on Tuesday, 22 July, which was welcomed by other countries, although they maintained it did not go far enough.
In addition to agriculture and industrial goods, Members will have a discussion on the level of ambition with regard to services liberalisation.
The negotiations, presided over by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, are taking place in a variety of formats. At the beginning of the week, discussions were held in so called “green rooms” that gather the 30-odd most important ministers. However, as Lamy deemed these insufficient to bridge the gaps, a new G-7 has emerged, composed of Australia, Brazil, China, the EU, India, Japan, and the US, seeking to hammer out a deal. There are also regular sessions of the Trade Negotiations Committee to keep the full membership abreast of developments - any deal will eventually have to be agreed by each and every Member in order to enter into force.
Patents and biological resources
The only environment-related agenda item on the table during the week is related to whether patent applicants should be obliged to disclose any biological resources or traditional knowledge used in their inventions. This trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) issue is clustered together with a push to extend intellectual property protections to geographically-linked foods such as Darjeeling tea or Roquefort cheese.
A North-South coalition of a hundred-odd countries, led by Brazil, the EU, India, and Switzerland, has called on ministers to accept both as part of a modalities agreement. They also called for a modalities deal to launch negotiations to accordingly amend WTO intellectual property rules as part of a final Doha Round package. These demands have been rejected by the US, Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, which argue that it would be inappropriate for ministers to make such detailed decisions when attempting to hammer out modalities.
Thus far, the US, one of the most powerful opponents to moving ahead on this area, has strongly signalled its unwillingness to compromise. “These TRIPS issues are important to many members, but we think it’s vital to keep the focus of this meeting on agriculture, (manufactured goods), services. This meeting is not the time to create new mandates on the TRIPS issues,” said a spokesperson for US Trade Representative Susan Schwab at a press briefing on 22 July.
Other environmental-related issues
Environmentalists have often pointed to new disciplines on fisheries subsidies, negotiated within the group that deals with trade rules, as a potential concrete deliverable of the Doha Round for the environment. While these issues are not on the table in Geneva this week, the outcome of the talks will affect how negotiations on fisheries subsidies proceed (see related story, this issue of the BioRes). The same holds for the Doha Round negotiations specifically focusing on environment, including on the relationship between the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements, information-sharing arrangements between the secretariats and the WTO, and the liberalisation of environmental goods and services.
Meanwhile, there are many indirect links between the outcomes of the talks this week and the environment. Among issues drawing increasing attention in other fora are the environmental impacts of the expansion of trade in physical terms through transport. Coupled with concerns related to high fuel prices, the climate change impacts in particular are creeping up the agenda.
There are suggestions within the ongoing climate change negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to start regulating greenhouse gas emissions from “bunker fuels” - ie fuels used to power international transport, both maritime and aviation. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has also launched a process to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, seeking to come up with a new legally-binding instrument in some form by December 2009. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is taking less concrete action.
Prospects uncertain
Overall, the outcome of the talks this week is far from assured. The WTO Doha Round has failed to meet critical deadlines a number of times before. Yet several officials in Geneva report a palpable sense that this year is somehow different, that this meeting merits the ‘make or break’ moniker in a way that past ‘moments of truth’ did not. US elections in November will handcuff trade policymaking in autumn. In 2009, as an Obama or McCain administration gets on its feet in Washington, Indians will go to the polls amidst rising food and fuel prices, and the European Commission will be replaced.
A failure to put the Doha negotiations on a clear track towards conclusion, their thinking goes, would make it easy for political leaders, especially in the US, to leave the talks to languish for a couple of years - at a time when the ongoing food price crisis is already making some wonder whether the agenda is out of date. “The institution will be totally discredited if nothing happens” this week, said one Geneva-based trade diplomat, suggesting that countries would look for alternatives to the WTO.
ICTSD is providing daily reports on the mini-ministerial in multiple languages. Please refer to the ICTSD’s website for up-to-date information and analysis.
ICTSD reporting.
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