Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 8 • 5th March 2002
Preliminary Agreement On Environment Negotiation Structure
At a 1 March informal meeting of the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), WTO Members reached tentative agreement on how to organise and schedule not only negotiations mandated by para. 31 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration, but also regular sessions of the CTE.
Scheduling
As previously decided at a 3 February General Council meeting, negotiations on Environment will take place in Special Sessions of the CTE (see BRIDGES Weekly, 5 February 2002). At the 1 March informal meeting, Members decided the following, though all decisions are preliminary and must be confirmed at a formal meeting at a later date:
-Three meetings of the regular CTE will be held.
-Meetings of the Special Sessions (SS) will be held back-to-back with regular CTE meetings, with the possibility that more could be scheduled, keeping in mind the need to keep the overall number of meetings to a minimum and to avoid overlap with the meetings of other negotiating bodies
-The bodies will meet on the following dates: CTE: 21 March, 13-14 June, and 8-9 October. CTE-SS: 22 March, 11-12 June, and 10-11 October.
-Observers would not be authorised to attend Special Sessions, as these are negotiating fora.
-An information session with secretariats from relevant multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) will be held, and will address technical assistance, capacity building, procedures for information exchange between MEAs and the WTO.
Negotiating sessions
Special Sessions would focus on the mandated negotiations outlined in para. 31, namely the relationship between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations; procedures for information exchange between relevant WTO committees and MEA secretariats and criteria for granting of observer status; and the reduction or elimination of tariff and non- tariff barriers to environmental goods and services. The status of this point remains somewhat unclear, however, as it was also decided at the 1 March meeting that negotiations on environmental goods and services would be best addressed in the Market Access Negotiating Group.
Members agreed that there should be separate phases for the negotiations; most likely a study phase, in which Members could submit and debate proposals, and a negotiations phase, in which Members could negotiate the final outcome. However, trade sources said that there was disagreement over when countries should be able to submit proposals. The EC, for instance, said at the informal meeting that there should be a flexible structure for negotiations, and that Members should not be precluded from submitting proposals at any stage in the negotiating process. Other Members want clearly-defined phases for submission of negotiating proposals.
Regular sessions
There seemed to be agreement on adopting the traditional ‘thematic cluster’ approach, whereby Members address items on the CTE’s agenda under either the ‘market access’ or ‘linkages between the multilateral environmental and trade agendas’ clusters. In addition to this, Members will assign priority on the CTE agendas to those areas that appear in para. 32 of the Doha Declaration, namely the effect of environmental measures on market access; the relevant provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs); and labelling requirements for environmental purposes, with work on these three areas to include the identification of any need to clarify relevant WTO rules.
Further, paragraphs 33 and 51 from the Doha Declaration are to be included as regular standing items on the CTE agenda. Para. 33 refers to technical assistance and capacity building in the field of trade and environment for developing countries, and the sharing of expertise and experience among Members on environmental reviews at the national level. Para. 51 mandates the CTE (along with the Committee on Trade and Development) to act as a forum to identify and debate environmental and developmental aspects of the negotiations, in order to help achieve the objective of having sustainable development appropriately reflected.
ICTSD will report further on the outcome of the 21-22 March regular and Special Session of the CTE.
ICTSD Internal Files.