Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 4 • Number 21 • 19th November 2004

IUCN CONGRESS: EXPLORING TRADE AND BIODIVERSITY LINKAGES

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IUCN CONGRESS: EXPLORING TRADE AND BIODIVERSITY LINKAGES

The urgent need for greater coherence and interaction between trade and environment policy-making processes emerged as one of the main calls for action throughout the workshop "International Trade - Friend or Foe of Biodiversity?". The workshop was organised as part of the IUCN - World Conservation Union - Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, from 17-25 November. Many participants felt that IUCN in particular — with its extensive network of governments, civil society groups, academia and increasingly businesses — could help foster interaction among different communities, providing the knowledge necessary to move the debate forward. Thereby, IUCN could help empower the conservation community to take advantage of the windows of opportunity provided within the WTO’s Doha mandate, as well as within trade talks at the regional and bilateral levels, to ensure that the outcomes are supportive of conservation objectives.

Trade - friend or foe?

At the workshop, Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth pointed to a clash of fundamentally different paradigms underlying free trade and environmental protection. For trade to become a ‘friend’ of biodiversity, a fundamental reform of the economic order was required, she stressed. Ernst-Ulrich von Weizsäcker, member of the German parliament, questioned whether the trade and environment regimes were really mutually supportive as often assumed, describing trade as "essentially a foe" of biodiversity. At the same time, participants generally felt that trade and trade impacts were a reality and that the conservation community urgently needed to get engaged to make it "friendlier". Participants noted that this would require a better understanding and articulation of the links between trade and biodiversity within the community in an effort to come up with creative thinking, actions and priorities on trade.

Building coherence

Many participants pointed to a lack of communication and interaction between the trade and environment communities in multilateral negotiations, potentially leading to incoherent results in the various forums, which did not take into account the full range of concerns and priorities. This was seen to be particularly true for debates on access and benefit-sharing related to genetic resources and traditional knowledge and the interface with intellectual property rights that is being discussed in a variety of multilateral forums as well as at regional, bilateral and national levels. Concerns were also expressed over perceived imbalances in the international governance system, with seemingly disproportionate power given to private over public interests. However, rather than condemning the WTO, the solution might be to strengthen other parts of the system, thereby providing an alternative, complementary venue for discussing trade and environment issues as part of a systemic approach to the debate.

Putting the debate into a broader context

Many participants stressed the need to place the trade and biodiversity debate into the broader context of sustainable development, taking into account the special concerns of the South. Participants also identified a need to look beyond the WTO, towards other engines of international trade and economic growth that stand in the way of sustainability. Among them, Simon Upton, Chair of the OECD Roundtable on Sustainable Development, raised unsustainable exploitation of natural resources in general — not only for the purpose of trade but also for domestic use — as one of the biggest foes of biodiversity. To address unsustainable consumption patterns, he suggested linking the growing number of consumers and producers that are seeking a positive output. Participants also highlighted the realities of illegal trade, which is becoming an increasingly significant component of international trade due to the high profit margins and the generally low risk level.

ICTSD reporting.