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WTO:
HANDS OFF OUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT!
Europe’s governments must wake up to the Hong Kong agenda. Trade liberalisation is destroying natural resources at unprecedented rates. The EU must urgently change track to prevent further destruction and instead foster a trade system that is sustainable, just and gender fair. Experts predict that the upcoming World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations in Hong Kong will result in negative impacts on environmental sustainability, development, human rights and gender inequality. All this bad news will be felt not only in the developing world but also closer to home in Europe. Yet the European Union continues as a leading force in the WTO pushing for greater opening of world markets in a range of areas including industrial goods, services and trade facilitation. What’s more shocking is that natural resources are still being promoted by the EU as ripe for being traded on the world market place.
When the 6th WTO Ministerial Conference gets underway in Hong Kong from 13-18 December to advance the conclusions of the Doha round of trade negotiations, environmentalists around the world will hold their breath. The potential effect of these trade talks on natural resources is vast. Effectively all publicly owned natural resources are on the negotiating table: forestry, fisheries, agriculture, biodiversity, water and energy. Local communities in the developing world, predominantly women who farm and fish on a small scale or indigenous peoples who have over generations created sustainable societies in harmony with nature, will all lose out. Local economies will be destroyed.
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