TRADE: Environmentalists Slam WTO Rulings

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 18 1998 (IPS) - International environmental watchdogs accused the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Monday of striking down national policies and undermining the Rio Earth Summit accords promoting sustainable development.

Oxfam-GB, the U.S.-based Center for International Environmental Law and the Community Nutrition Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) objected to recent WTO rulings in three trade disputes related to shrimp, bananas and beef.

The WTO should adopt urgent reforms to accomodate policies aimed at protecting human health and peoples’ livelihoods and conserving the global environment, they insisted.

WWF’s Charles Arden-Clarke said the enthusiasm generated by the Uruguayan Round of trade talks had turned into serious concern over the way international trade was promoted at the expense of environmental, social and development priorities.

The recent WTO rulings show a clear indifference to people forced into poverty, as in the case of the European Union’s banana regime, he said.

The WTO decisions also ignore health concerns expressed by the European Commission with respect to growth-hormones in beef and threats to endangered species of turtles by fishing for shrimp with inappropriate nets, he added, pointing out that around 150,000 sea turtles were needlessly killed every year due to the use of nets without “turtle excluder devices.”

The WTO ruled in favour of India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand, which filed a complaint against U.S. measures that banned the import of shrimp captured with nets lacking the device.

The four environmental groups presented their objections to the WTO rulings during the opening day of the institution’s ministerial conference Monday in Geneva.

The world trade body also decided in favour of a group of Latin American countries and U.S. fruit companies, which protested the EU regime granting preferences to bananas from former British and French colonies.

The environmentalists pointed out that the lost trade in bananas with the EU would have devastating consequences for thousands of Caribbean islanders.

In the case of U.S. exports to Europe of beef containing hormones exported, the WTO determined that the burden of proof lay on those countries seeking to protect human health rather than those seeking to liberalise trade.

U.S. national Brenan Van Dyke, the director of the Trade and Environmental Program Center for International Environmental Law, said a panel of three trade specialists operating in total secrecy had unilaterally rewritten a major part of an international agreement that had been painstakingly negotiated by governments over many years.

Van Dyke said the WTO decision galvanised US environmental backlash against current WTO policies.

“No U.S. president can expect to obtain ‘fast-track’ authorisation in the future unless and until environmental and procedural deficiencies of the WTO are repaired.

“To regain credibility, President Clinton is going to have to make substantive gains toward better WTO environmental policies. We no longer will be satisfied with promises; we need delivery,” he warned.