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Press Release
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Press Release
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Sonja Meister, Trade Campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: "The collapse of the talks is good news for the world's poor and the environment. The proposals on the table were dictated by the commercial interests of corporations over the economic and development interests of workers, farmers, and the global environment." The failure of the talks allows time to review and reconsider the multilateral trading system in its entirety. This will be welcome news around the world because the proposed WTO deal would have further impoverished the world's poorest people and caused irreparable damage to the environment. Some developing countries have refused to proceed because they too fear that a WTO deal would cause immense harm to millions of small and subsistence farmers. "The time delay created by the failure of the Doha negotiations must be used to review the past negotiations and analyse the flaws in the WTO system as a whole. We need an entirely new approach based on democratic multilateral governance that actively promotes human rights and environmentally sustainable development," Ms Meister added. The talks about the so-called 'Doha Development Agenda' were not about development. Recent World Bank and other studies - and even government negotiators themselves - gave witness to the fact that the trade liberalizing agenda was not working for the majority of people in developing countries. [1] It was clear that the interests of the largest and most powerful countries and their transnational companies continued to dominate the WTO's agenda. Furthermore, the WTO has so far failed to consider the disastrous global environmental impact of current negotiating proposals. This is in spite of the fact that there is increasing evidence elsewhere. For example, studies commissioned by the European Commission indicate that escalating international trade in natural resources is likely to damage global biodiversity and local economies. [2] *** For more information, please contact: Rosemary Hall, Communications Officer at Friends of the Earth Europe: tel:+32 25 42 6105, +32 485 930515, rosemary.hall@foeeurope.org *** [1] A study by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) released in March 2006 concluded that the World Bank's strategies on trade have not delivered on employment and poverty reduction. World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group Issues report Assessing Two Decades of Global Trade Programs, IEG, World Bank, Washington DC, 22 March 2006, www.worldbank.org/ieg/trade/docs/press_release_trade_evaluation.pdf [2] The European Commission-financed sustainability impact assessment on the forest sector, for example, demonstrates that there are likely to be significant and irreversible impacts on forests and biodiversity in 'biodiversity hotspot' countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, countries in the Congo Basin and Papua New Guinea. In addition, countries that currently protect their forest industries using trade measures can expect those industries to shrink and possibly collapse. Sustainability Impact Assessment of Proposed WTO Negotiations: Final Report for the Forest Sector Study, Marko Katila and Markku Simula, Savcor Indufor Oy, Finland, in association with the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, UK, with financial assistance from the Commission of the European Communities, 19 June 2005 http://www.sia-trade.org/wto/final%20report%20page.shtml Friends of the Earth Europe campaigns for sustainable and fair societies and for the protection of the environment, |