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Press Release
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Press Release
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Environment threatened by free trade laws Brussels/Geneva, 14 th October, 2005 - The World Trade Organisation is the worst possible place to protect international environmental agreements from free trade rules, new research published today reveals (1). The report "Is the WTO way the only way?" is published as government officials meet in Geneva in a desperate attempt to reach agreement on a global trade deal before the WTO Ministerial Conference in December in Hong Kong. The report, published by Adelphi Consult, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace, highlights how international agreements to protect the environment are threatened by current negotiations at the World Trade Organization. It shows, that there are effective and viable ways to safeguard environmental agreements from trade rules outside the WTO, notably the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. The report also investigates how the WTO deals with environmental related trade disputes. The latest high-profile transatlantic row between Europe and the United States, Canada and Argentina is over genetically modified organisms (GMOs or GM food). The US-led complaint argues that Europe's reluctance to embrace GM foods is damaging their farmers and is a barrier to trade. The report shows, that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is overly secretive, lacks environmental expertise and is severely limiting the involvement of the public, including the press. It is thus not suited to deal with disputes such as the one on GM. The report looks instead at a number of alternative options for settling disputes. It recommends that to uphold environmental agreements, the United Nations or the International Court of Justice are better venues for resolving trade disputes with environmental impacts than the WTO. (1) Friends of the Earth trade campaigner Alexandra Wandel said: Greenpeace International's Trade Policy Advisor Daniel Mittler, concludes: "Governments must act now to ensure that laws that protect people and the environment cannot by undermined by the WTO. They claim that no alternatives to the WTO exist. This report shows that they are lying." Contacts Notes to editors 1. The report, "Is the WTO way the only way?" is published by Adelphi Consult, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace. It is available to download from: www.foeeurope.org/publications/2005/alternatives_wto.pdf 2. A special negotiating session of the Committee on Trade and Environment discussing the relationship between Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and Trade Rules is taking place in Geneva on Friday 14 October 2005. Governments had launched negotiations on MEAs as part of the Doha round of negotiations in November 2001.
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