An 18 May briefing convened by WWF International looked at three recent dispute settlement rulings as an introduction to the review to be conducted before end-1998 on the WTO dispute settlement proceedings (see related article in April-May Bridges, Vol. 2, Issue #3).
The WTO recently ruled that the US import ban on marine shrimp caught with nets not equipped with turtle excluder devices (TEDs) violated GATT provisions, causing a significant back-lash against trade liberalisation in the US conservation community. A Southern representative pointed out, however, that effective sea turtle protection depended on much more than TED-use: in some mechanised shrimp fisheries up to 15 tonnes of fish are reportedly dumped for every tonne of shrimp landed. Most of this by- catch, including sea turtles, is thrown back to the sea either dead or dying. Rather than fight for obligatory world-wide TED-use, the representative of the New Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology called for support to a total ban on destructive marine technologies such as shrimp trawlers and fishing vessels equipped with purse-seine nets, as well as destructive forms of industrial aquaculture.
The Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) stressed that the renewal of President Clinton’s fast-track authority depended largely on the Administration’s inclusion of environmental concerns in its trade negotiation mandate. Among other priorities, CIEL called for a serious effort to bring processing and production methods (PPMs) within the scope of international trade agreements (the WTO, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and Transatlantic Economic Partnership, for instance). CIEL argued that the panel ruling introduced a new trade-based ‘threshold test’ for the use of the environmental exceptions allowed under Article XX. WWF International concurred, adding that the ruling constituted a violation of international environmental law, and contributed to a growing resistance to trade liberalisation at the global level, akin to the civil society opposition that has for the time being halted negotiation on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment within the OECD.
Amongst participants who shared this view was Oxfam, which highlighted the economic and social consequences of the WTO’s condemnation of EU’s preferential treatment of banana imports from African, Asian and Caribbean countries belonging to the Lomé Convention, saying that the withdrawal of the preferences would mean ‘imminent destruction’ to some 200,000 Caribbean banana growers and result in a 50 percent drop in export earnings. According to Oxfam, the ruling will subordinate a ‘transparent agreement’ between the EU and the ACP countries to the interests of multilateral corporations. He called for a change in WTO rules in favour of ’special and differential treatment for small and vulnerable economies highly dependent on a single commodity’, as the present category of least-developed countries (LDCs) had grown meaningless with the wide variation of income and export capacity between LDCs and other developing countries.
The Community Nutrition Institute drew some conclusions from the Appellate Body ruling that the EU’s import ban on beef treated with growth hormones was not justified because of lack of scientific evidence that such meat could damage human health. The Community Nutrition Institute proposed the following reforms to WTO’s handling of cases involving public health issues: placing the burden of proof on the party challenging the health standard; making it explicit that the SPS Agreement establishes floors, not ceilings, to health standards; deferring to other intergovernmental organisations/experts in the field of public health rather than GATT law; and acknowledging the appropriateness of the ‘precautionary principle’ in public health- related cases.