Organic waste being composted at a community-led waste management facility in Sesdan village of Gianyar regency, Bali. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
GIANYAR, Bali, May 14 2025 (IPS)

It was Christmas Eve last year when visitors across several tourism hotspots in Bali woke up to a ghastly scene they hadn’t expected: layers of cans, bags, bottles, and driftwood covering their favorite sandy beaches, washed up by hours of rain and high tide. So bad was the situation that from Kuta to Legian and Seminyak to Jimbaran—none of the island’s picturesque beaches was clean enough to attract the visitors for a swim.

The incident intensified the debate that had been raging across Bali for quite some time: was the world’s most picture-perfect holiday destination drowning in plastic waste and ocean debris?

“Garbage tides are not new to Bali nowadays. Every year, we see it increasing but around Christmas, when it’s the peak of our tourism season, we did not expect to see this. Nobody expected to see trash on the beach. All day we picked up the trash and cleaned the beach. It was not an easy job, says Siboto Sayeda, 25, who was one of the many locals who volunteered to remove the waste from the beaches. The cleaning drive—organized by a local NGO—went on for two days before tourists could swim again.

Nearly four months later, several beaches, including the beachfront of the ever-popular Kuta beach are still often barraged by a tide of waste.

Sweta Kala—a visitor from northern India’s Punjab who is in Bali for her honeymoon—says that the garbage on the beach has been a huge disappointment. “We chose to come to Bali instead of Goa (a beach destination in western India), but we haven’t been able to swim even once. The entire beach looks dirty. Our friends are advising us to move to Nusa Dua, but we already paid in advance for our entire vacation, she says.

Burn or Landfills? No Easy Solutions

Data from the Bali Central Bureau of Statistics (BPSJ) & Bali Tourism Authority (DISPARDA) shows that nearly 8 million tourists visited the island destination in 2024; of them, six million are foreigners. The total waste generated collectively by the visitors and the locals in the year was nearly 2 million tons. This is a 30 percent increase from the waste generated in 2020, says Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), a Jakarta-based energy and environment think tank.

“The causes of increased waste generation include a lack of awareness of waste management in most communities, including tourists visiting Bali. In addition, although district and city governments have regulations related to waste (such as waste sorting), enforcement of regulations and limited waste management infrastructure are still contributing to the increasing volume of waste, Tumiwa says.

Currently, the waste is usually deposited in a landfill, TPA Suwung, a 32-hectare landfill located in the heart of Bali or occasionally burned—especially in beach locations with no wide, motorable roads. However, the landfill is nearing its capacity, and the government is said to be scouting for new landfill sites in other parts of Bali.

A community-led solution movement

Thirty-three kilometers away from Kuta beach, villagers from 10 villages in Gianyar have joined hands to find a solution to the mounting waste – both organic and inorganic.

Named Merah Putih Hijau (Red White Green), the villagers’ group has clear goals: manage waste at the source so that there is no further need for either burning or dumping in the landfills; build a community-led circular economy model based on waste; and promote sustainable farming using organic manure while creating waste-based jobs and income for community members.

Their current efforts of the group, however, are primarily focused on running a waste composting facility Located in Sidan village, the facility is used to sort, compost, and package the organic waste. A visit to the center gives one a full view of those efforts, where a group of six to seven villagers can be seen engaged in various waste management activities. While a two-member team is seen sorting organic waste from inorganic waste, others are seen crushing, filtering, and packaging.

“This is a program run by, for, and of the villagers,” says Dewi Kusumawati, Project Manager at Mera Putih Hijau – it involves every villager’s active participation. “We begin by asking everyone in the village to sort their waste at home. Then, we collect the organic waste and bring it to this 3R-Transfer Depo (TPS3R) waste management facility, where it is used to produce quality compost.”

The history of the waste management program is connected to the official waste management program that, villagers say, hasn’t served its purpose to keep the island truly clean and at times has caused more harm than good.

Seven years ago, in 2017, the government of Indonesia set an ambitious target for waste management in its National Development Plan (Kebijakan dan Strategi Nasional). The target included reducing household waste by 30 percent and the handling of household waste by 70 percent by this year (2025).

As a part of this plan, in 2021 the government provided funding to all regencies to build village-level waste management facilities and accordingly, 129 facilities were built, including 36 in Gianyar Regency.  But less than 50 percent of the facilities are well-managed and operated, says Hermitianta Prasetya,  a Community Relation Manager at Bumi Sasmaya Foundation, which manages and funds Merah Putih Hijau.

According to Prasetya, the National Development Plan on waste management also included promoting organic farming and in 2019 the government passed a policy called Organic Farming System Provincial Regulation. But, in Bali, the farming sector is heavily dependent on chemical fertilizer and the new regulation didn’t have provisions to help farmers make a clear shift to using organic fertilizer with training or step-by-step technical guidance.  As a result, it became very hard to convince farmers to change to more sustainable agricultural practices such as using organic fertilizer.

The other reason behind this program has been curbing the current trend of sending waste to landfills: besides the government-owned landfill at Suwung, which handles 1,500 tons of waste every day, it is reported that there are also some 1,000 illegal open dump sites across the province, which pollute both the island’s water sources and environment.

“Currently, about 70 percent of the waste in Bali is taken to dump into landfills. The remainder is mainly organic waste that can be turned into compost. The Merah Putih Hijau program is trying to change the approach towards waste. So, we ask everyone in the village to sort their waste at home. Then, we collect the organic waste and bring it to this 3R-Transfer Depo (TPS3R) waste management facility, where it is used to produce quality compost. This compost then goes right back to the villagers to use in their farms. So, we are aiming to meet the village’s needs at where they are,” says Dewi Kusumawati, Manager of Merah Putih Hijau.

To help the villagers better understand the difference between organic and inorganic waste, the Merah Putih Hijau team also spends substantial time training villagers in separating organic and inorganic waste, composting, and different aspects of sustainable waste management as well as sustainable agriculture. The team has so far done dozens of trainings, says Kusumawati.

Persisting Plastic Problem

Despite their successful composting initiative, the Merah Putih Hijau team has a long way to go before achieving their dream goal of treating all waste locally. The biggest reason behind that is the ever-increasing volume of plastic and other non-compostable waste.

The team collects both organic and plastic waste. But right now, they do not have the capacity to recycle the inorganic waste. In their composting station, an entire room is filled with bundles of plastic bottles, bags, and other waste.  But in the absence of a recycling facility or a program, the waste keeps piling up.

This is a much bigger problem than a village community can handle, admits Prasetya, especially because managing plastic and other inorganic waste needs more effort, including technical expertise and specialized facilities. This cannot be done alone by a village community, and it will require partnership with other actors, including the government and the private business community.

The plan is now to start conversations for building those partnerships that can lead to bigger, stronger waste management initiatives, especially to tackle the plastic waste.

“We are going to create several local networks with hotels, restaurants, and other tourism-based businesses. We are already talking to government officials. Eighty percent of the Balinese population currently earn their livelihood from tourism. And piling garbage is a threat to our tourism and our livelihood. So, there is a common good for us to achieve by partnering and solving the plastic waste together,” Prasteya says.

Considering there are nearly 1300 hotels and restaurants in Giyaniar alone, this is going to be an uphill task for the community group to bring them all into one place and convince them to participate in a collective waste management movement. But Agastya Yatra, the head of the Bumi Sasmaya Foundation, believes that it is possible to do so. The garbage issue, he says, has already been noticed. Now, it’s time to find a solution that works in favor of the locals.

“Eighty percent of our people earn their living from tourism. So, we need solutions that will not affect tourism. We need to keep our tourists happy and for that, we need to keep our villages and beaches clean. This will work only if we join hands and work together,” he says. “Together, if we can segregate waste properly, recycle, and reuse, then slowly but surely, our problem with waste will vanish,” says Yatra.

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Indigenous Bali dogs hold the potential to unlock hidden secrets about ancestral dog diversity. Credit: Sonny Inbaraj/IPS

By Sonny Inbaraj
BALI, Indonesia, Feb 28 2024 (IPS)

Bali’s Island’s ancient canine guardians, the proud descendants of lineages tracing back tens of thousands of years, stand on the brink of extinction. Culling triggered by rabies outbreaks and interbreeding is pushing these living cultural treasures towards a tragic end.

For generations, traditional Bali Heritage Dogs have woven themselves into the fabric of the predominantly Hindu Balinese society. A tapestry woven with ancient folktales binds Bali dogs and the Balinese in a unique bond.

“Guided by the Tri Hita Karana’s principles of harmony and respect, Balinese Hindus forge a unique bond with dogs,” Ida Bawati Sari Budangga, a priest in Dusun Puchang in East Bali’s Desa Ban at the foot of the Gunung Agung volcano, told IPS.

Tri Hita Karana weaves harmony between humans and their environment, evident in offerings to deities and respect for nature’s bounty. Tri Hita Karana also serves as a powerful model for sustainable development, inspiring initiatives that balance human needs with environmental respect.

Balinese treat dogs with care, valuing their presence in their lives and communities. Credit: Dewa Made Suarjana/BAWA

“This isn’t merely pet ownership, but an embodiment of their deep connection to all living beings. From sharing meals to participating in temple rituals together, dogs are woven into the fabric of Balinese life, reflecting their reverence for the natural world and its creator,” added the priest.

In Balinese culture, the Mahabharata story of King Yudhistira and his loyal dog plays a significant role in understanding their deep respect for dogs. When Dharma, disguised as the king’s ill-kept dog, is denied entry to heaven by Indra, Yudhistira refuses to enter without him. This act of unwavering loyalty reveals Dharma’s true form as the God of righteousness, highlighting the importance of compassion and connection with all beings. This story continues to inspire the Balinese to treat dogs with respect and care, valuing their presence in their lives and communities.

Driven by interest in the Bali dog’s distinct genetic ancestry, studies such as the University of California, Davis 2005 study “Genetic Variation Analysis of the Bali Street Dog Using Microsatellites” reveal the wide diversity contained in their DNA. Microsatellites is a lab technique that uses genetic markers for studying genealogy, population organization, genome diversity, the process of evolution, and fingerprinting from extracted DNA samples.

The study found that dog populations on Bali had been separated for an estimated 12,000 years and this protracted isolation has shaped Bali’s dog genetics, resulting in distinct genetic variants absent elsewhere in other dogs.

UC Davis’ groundbreaking study unveiled an intriguing genetic link between Bali dogs and ancient Asian breeds such as the Dingo and Chow Chow. This fascinating lineage can be traced back to the Austronesian migration and colonization of South Indochina, which occurred before the last glaciation period when Bali was connected to the mainland through a land bridge that eventually submerged.

“As a result of their genetic isolation, indigenous Bali dogs hold the potential to unlock hidden secrets about ancestral dog diversity, and even shed light on ancient human migration patterns and trade routes,” commented UC Davis’ Dr Benjamin Sacks, adjunct professor, at the university’s school of veterinary medicine.

However, Sacks warned in response to the 2005 study and a study done in 2011: “We don’t have all the questions yet to ask, but they’re emerging every day, and if we lose these populations, we lose the ability to answer those questions.”

In 2008,

The indigenous Bali dog population has plunged from a staggering 800,000 to a mere 20,000. Credit: Sonny Inbaraj/IPS

Bali’s unique indigenous dog breed suffered a brutal blow with the knee-jerk reaction of mass culling, which continues to this day following rabies outbreaks. In a widespread plan to eliminate free-roaming dogs, the indigenous Bali dogs were not spared. Just like in other countries in Asia and Africa, rabies in Indonesia is being sustained within the domestic dog population. It’s not surprising that the public commonly associates rabies with dogs and dog bites.

According to the World Health Organization rabies is endemic in 26 provinces in Indonesia, including Bali, with 74 cases of human rabies out of 66,170 bite cases from suspected rabid animals reported in the country from January to July 2023.

Bali Island had never experienced rabies before, until 2008. Lax surveillance allowed a rabid dog to slip through from Flores, an island ravaged by endemic canine rabies since 1997, setting the stage for Bali’s own struggle with the animal-borne disease.

“Before the outbreak of rabies in 2008, the island had one of the highest dog-to-human ratios in the world,” said Janice Girardi, founder of the Bali Animal Welfare Association (BAWA).

“Mass culling was the first action that the local government authorities took in response to the rabies epidemic. They utilized teams that were armed with blow darts and baits that contained strychnine,” she added.

Culling on its own has never had an effect on rabies in dogs or humans or dog population growth, said Dr Darryn Knobel, professor at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in St. Kitts.

“If you’re culling, you’re going to be diverting resources away from vaccination. The only thing that works is vaccination and you need to vaccinate at least 70 percent of all dogs to get what we term herd immunity,” he explained.

An indigenous Bali dog in East Bali. Credit: Sonny Inbaraj/IPS

From 2005 to 2008, the Bali dog population was estimated to be between 600,000 and 800,000, according to a 2018 study. However, due to culling following the 2008 rabies epidemic in Bali, the population of free-ranging dogs has decreased by at least 25 percent, according to the study.

BAWA’s Girardi issued a stark warning about the indigenous Bali dog population, which has now plunged further from a staggering 800,000 to a mere 20,000, according to the NGO’s mapping.

“With such dwindling numbers,” she emphasized, “the chances of purebred dogs finding mates and perpetuating their lineage are vanishingly small, akin to winning the lottery.”

The interbreeding of native Bali dogs with dogs of other breeds that have been introduced to the island is another cause for concern. This occurred when the government of Bali, in 2004, abolished an ancient piece of legislation from 1926 that had been issued by Dutch colonialists to prevent the introduction of rabies into Bali from other islands within the archipelago.

For Balinese seeking outward signs of affluence, Western breeds and crossbreeds trump the indigenous Bali dog, deemed unworthy of attention and left wanting.

“I have one Bali dog now, but I’m planning to either get a Golden Retriever or a small long-haired crossbreed. They’re unique and good for our image,” 14-year-old I Kenang Sunia in Desa Jatituhun, Ban, in east Bali, told IPS.

Battling extinction, BAWA deploys its sterilization program to remote Balinese villages, targeting non-purebred dogs in a critical effort to conserve the dwindling population of the purebred Bali dog.

“We sterilise as many non-pure Bali dogs as possible in each area (to prevent interbreeding) in order to save the remaining indigenous dogs in Bali before they are lost forever,” said Girardi.

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Youth activists organised a mock lemonade sale to raise money for the Green Climate Fund in the absence of serious commitments at the Warsaw climate talks in November 2013. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2014 (IPS)

Facing a crucial meeting this week in Bali, the board of the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) once again postponed drawing out the bulk of policy that will guide the fund as it prepares to open later in 2014.

Facing a yawning funding gap, the 24-member board said it would “aim for” splitting the financing it doles out 50:50 between mitigation and adaptation efforts and to devote at least half of adaptation monies to vulnerable regions. In a minor victory, members also clarified language over a mechanism for countries to seek redress with the fund."The corporate capture of the Green Climate Fund is deeply troubling." -- Sarah-Jayne Clifton

The GCF, formally established in 2010, is intended to serve as the primary vehicle for industrialised countries to pay for mitigation and adaptation in the developing world. Almost immediately after its creation, though, wealthy countries began backtracking on their original commitments and started pushing for a greater use of private funds to leverage their smaller contributions.

A paucity of pledges in Bali and a statement indicating the board would “maximize engagement with the private sector” bolstered concerns over the potential for a slow unraveling of donor promises and a watering down of what began as a clear-cut way of repaying developing countries for damages caused by carbon emissions.

“The GCF Board urgently needs to decide on the shape of the Fund, but progress is grindingly slow,” Oscar Reyes, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, told IPS from Bali. “Most of what was scheduled for decision in Bali has been postponed. Given the inability to decide on matters of substance, the chances of significant breakthroughs at the next Board meeting in May look extremely slim.”

That next board meeting will take place May 18-21 in Songdo, South Korea.

Aletter signed by 80 civil society organisations called for ensuring the fund “truly prioritizes and meets the needs of climate-impacted people in developing countries, free of undue business and industry influence.”

Credit: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/

“Climate finance is compensation, reparations paid by those countries most responsible for the climate crisis to those worst impacted,” said Sarah-Jayne Clifton, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, a signee of the letter.

“It must be adequate and predictable and from public sources, and fully accountable to the developing countries who need it, not the profit-driven multinational companies of the rich world and their financial backers.”

After an original promise of 100 billion dollars was made at the 2009 U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen, climate financing dried up as governments facing austerity budgets at home chose to deprioritise it. The Overseas Development Institute estimates multilateral climate financing pledges fell by 71 percent in 2013.

When delegates met in Warsaw last November for the most recent U.N. Climate Summit, rich countries balked at a decreased 70-billion-dollar pledge.

It was hoped that the Feb. 19-21 meeting in Bali would clarify from where and exactly how the fund’s coffers will be filled. Prior to the meeting, the GCF had received 34 million dollars from Germany and South Korea, just enough to pay the staff at its Incheon headquarters.

Without clarification and donor guarantees, the U.N.’s 2015 comprehensive global climate conference in Paris could be thrown into disarray.

Attendees said they would have been happy with pledges of 10-20 billion dollars in Bali but donors offered up less than one million, just over a quarter of it in a highly symbolic donation from its host, Indonesia.

Though complete abandonment of the fund is a long way off, the slide towards private funding is causing concern among even the most cynical of observers.

“The vast body of that money should be from developed country’s budgets,” said Reyes. “It needs to be made political priority.”

The fund was initially intended to avoid replicating climate financing schemes already attempted by multilateral lenders and development banks – lenders who expect the return of at least their principal amount. Unlike those institutions, the GCF was meant not merely to achieve economic stabilisation in poorer countries or repair damage after storms. Instead, its genesis included the moral spirit of reparations for historic wrongs.

Yet like many international climate agreements, time has loosened memories and dampened initial euphoria.

“Our concern is that it doesn’t become ‘the World Bank for Climate Change’ and that it actually focuses on projects that can’t be done by private investors alone,” Reyes told IPS. “But what we see in particular is the [GCF] Secretariat is heavily staffed by people from the developed world where there is this tendency of seeing investment only as what can be leveraged from the private sector.”

Reyes says the 50:50 funding split should be binding and not aspirational. Money earmarked for mitigation in middle-income countries could potentially end up funding cleaner fossil fuel projects like natural gas installations. There had been hope that the board would emerge from Bali with stronger language limiting how much, if any, of funds could be spent on fossil fuels.

Severe flooding is one of many devastating effects of climate change, as the Caribbean island nation Dominica experienced in 2011. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Representation

In Bali, civil society groups called into question representation at the meetings, which they say gave the business sector and in particular large corporations too much influence.

Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, non-governmental constituencies are split into nine groupings, only one of which is the business community. That the Bali meetings had only four active observers – two from the business community and two from civil society representing the other eight, including trade unions, farmers and indigenous groups – fueled those accusations.

“The corporate capture of the Green Climate Fund is deeply troubling and yet another example of the interests of private finance and multinational corporations being placed above the public interest,” Clifton told IPS.

A central unresolved point of contention concerns how much of the fund should be dedicated to grants and how much of it to loans, as well as how generous those loans should be.

“One of the issues that should be decided here are the terms and conditions of concessional lending,” said Reyes. “The terms that we were pushing for would be around not contributing to indebtedness –we think adaptation should be grant funding.”

In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan – even as its delegates engaged in a hunger strike at the Warsaw summit – the Philippines government immediately took out one billion dollars in emergency loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Though both institutions provided smaller direct grants, the model troubles groups that have for years campaigned for debt forgiveness in the developing world only to see climate change potentially push those regions towards further loans.

“Climate finance should not be profit-driven, nor forced as loans or other debt-creating instruments on to countries already burdened by both the worst impacts of the unfolding climate crisis and the obligation to service existing unjust, illegitimate debt,” said Clifton.

Like moths to a flame, countries with large financial sectors like Switzerland and the UK have reportedly been talking up the benefits of sophisticated currency swaps as ways to safeguard private foreign investment. While such assurances will be required for certain outlays, groups are concerned that money being pledged does not become a pool for Wall Street to play in. In Bali they had hoped to set limits on the private sector’s involvement – that did not happen.

But Wall Street may end up footing much of the bill itself. Growing pressure in Europe has seen moves to use income generated by proposed Financial Transaction Taxes – levies on the buying and selling of assets – to fill gaps in climate financing.

By Roberto Azevêdo
GENEVA, Jan 20 2014 (IPS)

At the Ninth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), held in Bali Dec. 3-7, a series of decisions was adopted aimed at streamlining trade, allowing developing countries more options for providing food security, boosting least developed countries’ trade, and bolstering development in general.

The first pillar of the “Bali Package” is agriculture. This is the cornerstone of the Doha Development Agenda, which the WTO has been working on since 2001. Agricultural issues are very dear to developing countries, and the Bali Package delivered some important outcomes.Agreements such as this cannot be sufficient on their own to ensure globalisable gains.

For example, it sets us on track for a reform of export subsidies and measures of similar effect, and it makes practical progress towards better implementation of the tariff quota commitments assumed in the Uruguay Round (1986-1994).

There is also a reaffirmation and a deepening of the political commitments assumed in Hong Kong in 2005 on trade liberalisation and the reduction of distorting support to cotton – a very important issue for the African countries that grow that crop.

The Package also provides temporary protection for food security programmes in developing countries, which allow for the stockpiling of grain for subsequent distribution to the poor. As we know, some of those countries could be exposed to legal challenges in the WTO for exceeding the limits stipulated in the Agriculture Agreement for certain types of domestic support.

So, in addition to the temporary protection against legal challenges, the Bali Agreement states that a permanent solution will be negotiated and concluded before the 11th Ministerial Conference in four years’ time.

The second pillar of the package is development. Here, a monitoring mechanism will provide for the review and strengthening of special and differential treatment provisions for developing countries, which are contained in all WTO multilateral texts. This achievement is vital for the equilibrium and efficacy of the multilateral system.

There are also a number of specific measures to support the least developed countries (LDCs). They include reforms that would enable services providers in LDCs to enjoy new export opportunities in developed country markets.

They also include steps to simplify rules of origin, which again will open up new export opportunities for those countries specifically.

Under this pillar we will also see improvements in trade preference arrangements which extend exemption from tariffs and quotas to LDC exports.

The third and final pillar is trade facilitation, which sets out to simplify and modernise customs procedures, and make them more transparent, thereby reducing transaction costs.

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation will be able to provide a significant – and today much needed – boost to the global economy, delivering growth and jobs. This could be worth as much as one trillion dollars per year to the global economy, generating up to 21 million jobs.

Significantly the Agreement also ensures the provision of technical assistance to support developing and least developed economies to implement these modernising reforms, and therefore help them integrate better into global trade flows.

Clearly estimates can vary, but once the Agreement is implemented, there could be an expansion in developing country exports of up to 10 percent – compared to a 4.5 percent expansion in developed countries.

It is true that the deal represents only part of the Doha Development Agenda. But there can be no doubt that this is a significant package that will provide a considerable economic boost and improve the lives of millions of people around the world  – particularly among the poorest and in countries whose economies have stalled and are suffering high levels of unemployment.

In the specific case of the European Union and its member States, the conclusion of the Bali Package reflects that grouping’s chief negotiating objectives. With the Agreement on Trade Facilitation, opportunities for expanding trade will clearly increase.

The Agreement also offers potential to facilitate the internationalisation of small and medium sized enterprises, which are important drivers of job creation and income distribution in many European countries.

But of course these outcomes do not fully reflect achievement in Bali. There was a great deal more at stake. I said at the start of the Bali Conference that the very future of multilateral trading system hung in the balance.

In recent months there has been a lot of talk about regional and bilateral agreements. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States and the European Union is one such potential agreement. My view of this is the same as of other potential agreements of this kind: it is a positive initiative to be welcomed – but it can only ever be one part of the wider picture.

Agreements such as this cannot be sufficient on their own to ensure globalisable gains. The proliferation of regulations and standards tends to multiply rather than reduce costs.

The multilateral trading system was never the only option for international trade negotiations. It has always coexisted with, and benefited from, other initiatives, whether regional or bilateral. They are therefore not mutually exclusive alternatives.

The WTO disciplines also need to evolve to reduce the gap that will exist between multilateral regulations and the new generation regulations negotiated outside Geneva.

The two processes, multilateral and bilateral, must move forward together to reduce costs effectively and to curb protectionism. Otherwise, we could see results that are exactly the opposite of what we are seeking.

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