G-7 ASKED TO SHOW 'LEADERSHIP'

8:13 AM Jun 18, 1997

G-7 ASKED TO SHOW 'LEADERSHIP'
Geneva, 18 Jun (TWN) -- The Switzerland-based international environment NGO, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has asked the Group of 7 leaders, due to meet in Denver (USA) to revise the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), currently being negotiated in the OECD, and stop $320 billion of annual foreign investments from contributing to further environmental degradation and global warming.

In a statement, sent to the G7 leaders, the WWF Director-General Claude Martin, said the G7 leaders should positively influence the Earth Summit II next week. "The Rio Summit, recognized environment and development as inseparable. Investment is the link between the two. In its current form, the MAI will harm rather than reward ecologically responsible investors."

The MAI, due to be finalised in May 1998, leaves developing nations and the environment wide open for over-exploitation. It currently incorporates no legal controls whatsoever to prevent exploitative foreign investment as has happened in foreign-owned copper and gold mines of Papua New Guinea.

The WWF believes that the MAI (with the US as the main driving force behind it) will compromise host nations' ability to regulate foreign investors' adherence to environment and development standards, and may even create conflicts with earlier environmental agreements, such as Montreal protocol.

WWF noted that international investment in the energy sector was rising and, without environmental provisions in the OECD agreement, there will be environmentally destructive and inefficient energy investments.

"The MAI must be 'greened' from inside if foreign investment is to help save, rather than destroy, our global environment," Dr. Martin said. "If it is not greened it is going to get a rough ride through national parliaments, which ultimately have to approve its signature".

The WWF also called for an end to the closed-door MAI negotiations, and for full access to developing countries who are being invited to sign the final document. Environmental and public interest groups should also be given the opportunity to see the negotiating texts and make effective inputs into these negotiations.