Last year, in Doha, ministers reaffirmed their commitment to the objective of sustainable development, as stated in the Preamble of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement itself. They even instructed both the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment and its Committee on Trade and Development to act as fora to identify and debate developmental and environmental aspects of the negotiations, so as to ensure that sustainable development concerns are reflected in the outcome of the Doha Development Agenda. This message was yet again reinforced in the outcome of last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Channelling resources
Trade facilitates economic growth. And while economic growth per se is not necessarily sustainable, higher incomes are a precondition for being able to act. If poverty is part of the problem, economic growth will be part of the solution. But, again, greater income is not in itself a remedy for environmental problems: it needs to be accompanied by policies which channel resources accordingly, in a way that leads to responsiveness and accountability.

National governments play a key role. Environmental problems are complex and varied. Academics and politicians battle – and understandably so – over the choice of concrete economic measures to translate policy goals into specific incentives or disincentives in each environmental field. Appropriate regulatory policy is neither self-evident nor cost-free.

Trade liberalization – paradoxical as this may seem to some – is not about deregulation. On the contrary, it spotlights the need for appropriate regulation, or good governance, and increases the burden of responsibility on governments. All this must be considered in the light of the fact that many governments may have serious resource constraints to begin with, or have priorities which lie elsewhere.

Reducing discrimination
The WTO is a rule-making institution. It is concerned with removing unnecessary barriers and distortions to trade and with reducing unjustifiable discrimination between its Members. Trade liberalization may be intrinsically positive to the environment in that it entails a more efficient allocation of global resources. Many governments argue, for example, that subsidies which directly stimulate intensive agricultural production have negative environmental effects and put producers in other parts of the world at a disadvantage. Another example cited by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) are the subsidies which may directly stimulate over-capacity in fishing fleets. Liberalization here has been termed ‘win-win-win’, for development, the environment and trade.

There is no one WTO set of rules specific to the environment. Environmental issues and concerns are horizontal in nature. Hence, much of the discussion in the WTO is about whether its current rules adequately meet environmental concerns.

It is important to reiterate that the WTO itself does not create environmental standards. The expertise and technical knowledge for this lie in the domain of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), each of them being specific to various global or regional environmental concerns (such as biodiversity, chemicals, etc.). The ongoing negotiations in the WTO are now looking at, among other things, the relationship between existing WTO rules and ‘specific trade obligations’ contained in MEAs. One of the key issues, which Members have long debated, is how best to ensure that international trade and environmental regimes are mutually supportive.

What does this mean? It should not be possible for a government to negotiate one set of rules in the context of an MEA and another, conflicting, one in a trade forum such as the WTO. If this happens, and assuming – as I must – that governments act in good faith, failure of communication must lie at the root of the problem. Perhaps it is not so strange that there is a growing need for cooperation and coordination in a world that is increasingly interconnected.

Positive synergies
This calls, first and foremost, for domestic coherence in trade and environmental policy within national governments. It is all very well for us, in the WTO Secretariat, to organize technical assistance and capacity-building activities with our colleagues in other Secretariats such as the United Nations Convention on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UNEP and the MEAs – but at the end of the day it is national governments which will negotiate the mutually supportive rules on which both MEAs and the WTO stand. In fact, better interaction between environment and trade officials is likely to be part of the solution to the ongoing trade and environment negotiations themselves.

The commitment from Doha to negotiate on trade and environment should be welcomed as a significant development. It is important for the trading system to continue to advance understanding of the complex linkages between policies in the two areas. Through the negotiations, environmental and trade agencies are increasingly recognizing that there are positive synergies between trade disciplines and environmental objectives.

The WTO/MEA relationship is an important part of the trade and environment debate in the WTO, but it is not at its heart. Many member countries share a fundamental concern that protecting the environment could all too easily be used for trade protectionist purposes – that it might result in arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination, or a disguised restriction on international trade. Of course, nobody questions the importance of environmental protection. No member of the WTO is prevented from taking measures to protect human, animal or plant life or health, or the environment.

Understanding and cooperation
The crux of the matter lies in translating a policy objective into a measure which affects trade. This can be a source of friction, but it need not be if there is better understanding and cooperation on all sides.