WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 3 • Number 14 • 25th August 2003

WTO Negotiations speed up in lead-up to Cancun

Do More

See also

From 10-14 September WTO Members will meet in Cancun, Mexico, for the fifth WTO Ministerial Conference to take stock of the current round of trade negotiations launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. Environment- and biodiversity-related issues explicitly feature within the negotiating mandate of the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), but are also folded into other negotiating areas, including agriculture, fisheries, intellectual property rights and possible negotiations on the ‘Singapore Issues’ (investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation).

Heads of Delegation are currently meeting every morning with the Chair of the General Council, Ambassador Perez del Castillo of Uruguay, to discuss items included in the draft Ministerial text. Smaller groups are meeting during afternoons and nights and some WTO Members have tabled key proposals. On discussions related to environment and biodiversity, negotiations have mainly focused on issues related to the observer status of multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) Secretariats, agriculture and fisheries. There have been no recent developments in the other negotiating areas related to environment and biodiversity, including the relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, eco-labelling and the effects of environmental measures on market access.

Informal environment discussions focus on observership

On 23 August, WTO Members met informally to further discuss the status of observership of MEA Secretariats and a few international organisations to attend special (negotiating) sessions of the CTE (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 11 July 2003). The EC proposed to invite UNEP, UNCTAD, the Basel Convention, the UNFCCC, the Montreal Protocol, CBD, CITES and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) to special sessions of the CTE. Several countries, including the US, Japan, Switzerland and Norway, supported the EC proposal. However, in particular developing countries, including Egypt, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, continue to oppose a permanent invitation and would instead prefer to extend invitations to the organisations on a flexible basis just prior to the CTE meetings. Members did not reach an agreement on the EC proposal. Similarly, the systemic decision on observership remains stuck at the level of the Trade Negotiations Committee.

Agriculture negotiations move forward

A second draft Cancun Ministerial text was circulated on 24 August, including a new Annex setting out a framework for establishing agriculture modalities. The draft Annex aims to strike a balance between the generally conservative EC-US ‘joint text’ and a counter proposal by twelve developing countries from the Cairns Group plus China, India, Mexico, Venezuela and Peru, which are more supportive of agricultural liberalisation albeit with significantly easier conditions for developing countries.

The draft Annex notes that developing countries "shall benefit from special and differential treatment, including lower tariff reductions and longer implementation periods". The text also includes references to ’special products’, which would be subject to a linear cut (to be determined). The text would also set up a special agricultural safeguard for use by developing countries. Non-trade concerns (NTCs), which include, for instance, biodiversity conservation, landscape preservation and other aspects of rural environmental management, are mentioned in the text, but without specific details.

The concept of ’special products’ is being strongly advocated by a group of six like-minded countries, including the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Kenya, Nicaragua, Panama and Sri Lanka, which would like such products to be exempted from tariff reduction commitments. The group of six has proposed that developing countries should be able to self-designate an [unspecified] percentage of tariff lines as special products, which would be exempt from tariff cuts. The EC-US text also proposes a special agricultural safeguard mechanism for use by developing countries "as regards import-sensitive tariff lines".

The EC-US text acknowledged the trading blocks’ failure to agree on the issue of NTCs. Like Japan, Korea, Norway and Switzerland, the EC is part of the ‘Friends of Multifunctionality’, which maintains that support for legitimate NTCs, such as the environmental and social roles of agriculture, should be exempt from reduction commitments. Submissions from Japan, Norway and Switzerland (on behalf Bulgaria, Chinese Taipei, Iceland, Korea, Liechtenstein) regretted that NTCs were not addressed in the EC-US paper, and indicated that they would be able to show more flexibility in subsidy reduction if such concerns were taken into account. These countries would prefer negotiations to be less ambitious than proposed by the EC-US and by Cairns et al, especially in the areas of market access and in reducing domestic support.

Group of developing countries submit joint fisheries proposal

The WTO Negotiating Group on Rules met, from 21-22 July to consider, inter alia, a submission on fisheries subsidies by a group of small island and coastal states, including Antigua, Barbuda, Belize, Fiji Islands, Guyana, the Maldives, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis (TN/RL/W/136).

The proposal — the first of its kind in the fisheries negotiations from a cohesive group of developing countries — advocates for exceptions from fisheries disciplines relevant to small fishery-dependent states, following a background paper by the of ‘Friends of Fish’ group (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 30 June 2003). Specifically, the proposal aims to address the sustainable development concerns of small vulnerable states — noting the relatively high dependence of their populations on fisheries — and to operationalise proposals on special and differential treatment (S&D) for developing countries in this area. It outlines three categories of fisheries activities relevant to the small coastal states: revenue generation from access fees for distant water fleets; domestic and foreign fishers operating for export in the waters of the small coastal states; and artisan fishery operations for both domestic and export markets.

At the meeting, New Zealand, Australia, the EC, Barbados and Japan supported the inclusion of a development dimension in the talks. The US and Mauritius expressed their interest in working along the lines of the proposal. Australia, on the other hand, felt more appropriate ways of dealing with S&D existed than through the focus on subsidy definitions. This meeting was the final scheduled session of the Negotiating Group prior to the Cancun Ministerial meeting.

Additional Resources

For the latest news, resources, events and logistical information around the Cancun meeting, see the Ministerial section on the ICTSD website.

For a more in-depth account of the agriculture negotiations, see BRIDGES Weekly, 21 August 2003, and the forthcoming issue of BRIDGES Monthly.

For a more in-depth account of the fisheries negotiations, see BRIDGES Weekly, 28 July 2003.

ICTSD reporting.