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Trade and environment showdown at ministerial
In his opening address at the WTO ministerial last week, WTO Director- General Rennato Ruggiero called for “renewed political impetus” for the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) in order to seriously address the issue of trade and environmental linkage. Mr. Ruggiero also promised increased dialogue between the global trade body and environmental groups…
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G-8 blasted for lack of progress on hipcs
International development agencies last week were enraged by the level of commitment–or lack thereof, from the Group of Eight industrialized nations toward enhanced debt relief for the world’s poorest countries. 70,000 people marched on the G-8 Summit in Birmingham, England as part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief, yet left disappointed as the…
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LDCs call for market access, debt promises fulfilled
Ministers from the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) last week called on developed countries to fulfill promises made regarding increased market access for LDC exports and reiterated concerns over the speed and scope of debt relief for the world’s poorest countries. In a statement circulated by LDC ministers, the LDCs expressed “deep concern that the…
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WTO ministers gear up for more debate on new trade talks
WTO trade ministers agreed to hold next September a special session of the WTO General Council in order to draw up recommendations on the future work program, including a possible new round of trade talks. According to the ministerial declaration, the General Council is to develop recommendations for the third WTO ministerial scheduled for 1999,…
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WTO ministerial workshop contact information
CIEL - Center for International Environmental Law: Matthew Stilwell, B.P. 21, 160a Route de Florissant 1231-Conches, Geneva, Switzerland, Tel/Fax: 41 22 789 0738, Email: cie…@igc.apc.org, Website: http://www.econet.apc.org/ciel/ Consumers’ Choice Council: 1367 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 300, Washington D.C., USA, Tel: 202 785 1950, Fax: 785 8702, Email: a…@igc.org Consumers International:…
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Agriculture
ICTSD’s 20 May workshop on “Trade, Agriculture and Sustainable Development” looked at the social, economic and environmental effects of implementation of the WTO Agriculture Agreement, the work of the Committee on Agriculture and prospects for and views on upcoming negotiations. An official from the WTO Agriculture Division, and representatives from the Resource Centre for Peoples…
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TRIPS
Several workshops were held on and around the upcoming review of Article 27.3 (b) of the Agreement on Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights. This article allows countries to generally exempt plants and animals other than micro-organisms from patentability, but requires that new plant varieties be protected either by patents or ‘effective sui generis systems’. The Article…
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Dispute settlement
An 18 May briefing convened by WWF International looked at three recent dispute settlement rulings as an introduction to the review to be conducted before end-1998 on the WTO dispute settlement proceedings (see related article in April-May Bridges, Vol. 2, Issue #3). The WTO recently ruled that the US import ban on marine shrimp caught with…
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Developing country issues
Third World Network (TWN) organised three workshops during the Ministerial. The first was held at the beginning of the Ministerial and focused on “Key Issues Facing the WTO Ministerial Conference.” NGOs generally felt that no new trade liberalisation agreements should be signed before the effects of the Uruguay Round Agreements for developing countries are clearly…
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Competition policy
On 20 May, ICTSD, CUTS (India) and Consumers International (CI) hosted a meeting on Competition Law and International Trade. Representatives of the Intellectual Property and Investment Division of the WTO secretariat, as well as of UNCTAD, made presentations and served as resource persons during the meeting. Presentations were also heard from the representatives of CUTS…
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Public participation / global governance / WTO parliament
A workshop convened by the Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations examined the initiative of establishing a WTO Parliament in the light of the trade body’s increasing role as a ‘focal point of global governance’. While participants agreed that a legislative structure along the lines of the European Parliament was a distant goal, they concluded that…
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Labour
Labour voices were loud and many at the WTO Ministerial NGO meetings from 18 to 20 May, 1998. Facilitated by SOLIDAR — an alliance of NGOs with links to trade unions and social democratic parties — and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), workers unions organised a preparatory session, workshops on labour standards…
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Gender
Bringing forward a joint message about the effects of trade liberalisation on women, several women’s civil society organisations, campaigning groups and unions — some of them members of the Informal Working Group on Gender and Trade (IWGGT) — met often during the Ministerial. The IWGGT was formed at the first WTO Ministerial in Singapore in…
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Effects of trade on the environment
On 19 May, WWF International presented the methodology it is developing for assessing the environmental impacts of trade agreements. Participants agreed that the impacts were difficult to quantify, not least because in many instances the exact cause of an observable effect is hard to pinpoint. For instance, in developing countries experiencing negative effects due to…