SINGAPORE,
8 February 2007 — The environment is often used as the favored club for
“anti-globalization” protestors at IMF, World Bank and World Trade
Organization (WTO) meetings. However, according to WTO’s
Director-General Pascal Lamy, “failure of the Doha negotiations would
strengthen the hand of all those who argue that economic growth should
precede unchecked without regard for the environment.” Lamy who was
addressing the UNEP Global Ministerial Environment Forum in Nairobi on
Feb. 5, 2007, warned that “trade and the WTO must be made to deliver
sustainable development.” In his address, Lamy referred to James
Lovelock, the inventor of the electron detector’s, 1979 published work
“ Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth” that warned that living matter is
not passive, and that the earth responds to provocation. He told his
audience that that “the earth’s air, oceans and land surfaces react in
the face of threats to their very existence,” He added that “today, as
we face environmental challenges of an unprecedented magnitude, like we
do with climate change, there is little doubt that Gaia (earth) would
react, and that humankind may suffer the consequences.” Lamy
noted that the UNEP’s Governing Council meeting could not be timelier
as it came in the wake of many serious warnings about the environment
as well as environmental disasters such the floods in Southeast Asian
Nations like Indonesia and Malaysia. He described “sustainable economic
development” as a “must.” Lamy underlined that sustainable
“development should be the cornerstone of our approach to globalization
and to the global governance architecture that we create.” He
noted that the idea of sustainable development was “placed right at the
heart of the WTO’s founding charter” and also a key element of the Doha
Round of the WTO negotiations. “The environmental community” had played
a decisive role in calling for greater mutual support between trade and
the environment, he added. He further said that globalization
had ensured that “the world has become inter-connected to a point, that
today it is impossible for a country to live and prosper in isolation
of the rest of the world.” Lamy admitted that while
globalization offered opportunities it also required “careful
management” and it also had “drawbacks.” He pointed out that, “the
management of globalization would allow us to capture its benefits,
while leaving behind its downside,” and called for more effective
“global governance … at a level that transcends national boundaries.”
Lamy noted that institutions on global governance must be strengthened
to function as a more coherent whole. Moreover, pricing of
resources was a key element in ensuring a more efficient allocation of
resources, he said, noting that completing the Doha Round would help
the environment by “tearing down the barriers that stand in the way of
trade in clean technologies and services, as well as a promise to
reduce the environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies that are
leading to overproduction and harmful fisheries subsidies which are
encouraging over-fishing and depleting the world’s fish stock.”
“The WTO needs the engagement of the environmental community in these
negotiations,” Lamy said and previous efforts “must be sustained,
especially at this crucial phase of the Doha Round.” Though the WTO may
be imperfect but, Lamy said “it continues to offer the only forum
worldwide that is exclusively dedicated to discussing the relationship
between trade and the environment.” He called on “the environmental
community to support the environmental chapter of the Doha Round, and
to provide its much needed contribution.”
“Trade and indeed the WTO, must be made to deliver sustainable development,” he underscored.
He noted that governments had made a start that would “allow them in
the future to become bolder in addressing issues that have so far been
left behind like the proper pricing of resources, the
internationalization of externalities and sound energy policies.”
Lamy stressed that though the contribution of the Doha Round to the
environment “is but a drop in the bucket of the solutions required to
address the world’s environmental problems,” still that drop “needs to
enter the bucket, so that governments are encouraged to begin looking
at the bucket as a whole.” He added that “a sustainable development
strategy linking all international actors must become our goal.”
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