7:31 AM Oct 31, 1996
MAJOR NORTH-SOUTH DIFFERENCES AT CTE
Geneva 31 Oct (TWN) -- Major North-South divisions on a range of environment-related issues have engulfed the World Trade Organization's Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) in its preparations for the Singapore Ministerial Conference (SMC). The CTE has been working to produce a report on its two-year work for the first Ministerial meeting of the WTO when the work and terms of reference of the CTE is to be reviewed. Some developing countries say that the Singapore meeting has to decide whether any work in this area needs to be continued within the WTO, and if so through which mechanism - extending the life of the CTE or through an existing body of the WTO. A draft of the CTE report (in three sections) to the Ministerial Meeting has been the subject of discussion for the past several weeks in the CTE. Whilst Sections 1 and 2, which provide a factual account of the past two years' CTE discussions have been found generally acceptable, the CTE has been bogged down with controversies and disagreements over the crucial Section 3, containing conclusions and recommendations. After some extensive bilateral consultations, the Chairman of the CTE, Amb. Sanchez Arnau of Argentina put forward a draft Section 3. But attempts to find a consensus based on this draft of Section 3 appear to have failed. Several developing countries have been unhappy over the entire process and complain that points disputed by them have appeared in the draft report, and in subsequent drafts of various parts, even though there had clearly not been a consensus. One developing country negotiator complained that anything that met with objection of the Quad countries (Canada, EU, Japan and the US) were automatically excluded in the revisions, but those objected to by developing countries continued to appear. With various drafts, revisions, and formulations of working groups, remaining as restricted documents, it is difficult to make a judgement on these complaints, but the nature and seriousness of complaints of several key developing country delegations is very apparent and open. At the end of last week, as time pressures mounted to finish its work, the CTE decided to form five drafting groups to deal with the following issues: * Relationship between multilateral environment agreements (MEAs) and the multilateral trading system; and relationship between the dispute settlement mechanisms in the WTO and in MEAs (Items 1 and 5 of the agenda) * Environmental requirements for products, including eco-labelling, standards, technical regulations and recycling (Item 3B) * Market access and environment measures and removal of trade restrictions and distortions (Item 6). * Export of domestically prohibited goods (Item 7). * The TRIPS agreement and environment (Item 8). The drafts of the five groups are to be consolidated by the WTO Secretariat into a new Section 3 of the report by Friday afternoon. An informal meeting is scheduled for 6 November to iron out difficulties, and ready a report for adoption by the CTE in time for the meeting of the WTO's General Council. Several developing country delegations are frustrated that due to lack of personnel they are not able to be present in any of the five drafting groups, or in more than one. Besides the CTE, several other committees of the WTO are also meeting, at the same time, and all of them under time deadline pressures. Several points are still under dispute in the CTE. For instance, in the drafting group for items 1 and 5, there is draft language along the lines that WTO rules should not hamper the ability of MEAs to achieve their objectives. A separate sentence says that equally, MEAs should not undermine the open, non-discriminatory nature of the trade system. Some developing countries are opposed to the first sentence out of concern that a statement that WTO should not hamper MEA objectives (without an adequate qualifier about MEA membership and its universality) might signal a blanket WTO approval of MEA measures, even if some or many WTO members are not a party to the MEA or MEAs concerned. A member of the drafting group said that the sentence was needed as a political statement to satisfy the demands of the public in certain (developed) countries. Some developing country delegations responded that they too had public constituencies that felt differently. The inability of developing countries to cope with so many simultaneous meetings due to lack of personnel was clearly demonstrated, with adverse effect to their interests, at the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade. During discussion of the Committee's draft report for the SMC, a proposed text (backed by developed countries including Canada) was approved, along the lines that although there was no consensus on coverage of non-product PPMs (processes and production methods), the Committee generally felt that work should continue on 'cradle-to-grave or life-cycle analysis' of products. This issue of PPMS is a hotly debated issue in the CTE, and in its negotiating process, the TBT formulation is being used to force developing countries to accept it there. A number of Northern and North-based international environment groups have been supporting trade restrictions based on PPMs, as a way of ensuring adoption of particular PPMs by their industries, and protecting such industries against "unfair" trade by imports not using the same PPMs. Several developing country NGOs have refused to accept this, arguing that environmental friendliness of production methods vary from country to country, and if consumers and people in the North want to have higher quality of life through enhanced PPMs, they should be ready to pay the price for it, and not shift the burden to developing countries through trade restrictions based on PPMs. Thus the North-South governmental differences are matched by differences among North-South environment groups. Some South environment groups have been opposing any special provisions for exemption from trade rules for promoting environmental protection unless it be matched by equally effective exemption to countries for promoting developing. A number of developing countries did not agree with the text of the TBT Committee report that was approved when they were not present. Subsequently, the Egyptian delegation requested that this aspect of the TBT report be reopened for discussion on the ground that several delegations were absent when the report was adopted. This request was supported by other delegations, including India, Mexico, Morocco and Peru. However the request was turned down by some developed countries which said that if this report were to be reopened, then the same reopening may have to be done for other reports in other committees. The only concession was to have a footnote in the report about the reservations of the countries concerned.