WHERE NEXT FOR THE WTO? VIEWS, IDEAS AND PROPOSALS BY TRADE MINISTERS. Published by the Federal Trust for Education and Research. A compendium of articles by trade ministers has been released in anticipation of the 15 December 2003 meeting of the WTO General Council. In a series of articles, key trade ministers map out their positions in the current trade impasse. The articles have been writeen by, inter alia, Billie A. Miller, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Barbados, Celso Amorim, Foreign Minister, Brazil, Pierre S. Pettigrew, Minister for International Trade, Canada, Yousef Boutros Gali, Minister of Foreign Trade, Egypt, and Pascal Lamy, Commissioner for Trade, EC. For the full text please see: http://www.fedtrust.co.uk
TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT AT THE WTO: LEARNING THE LESSONS OF CANCUN TO REVIVE A GENUINE DEVELOPMENT ROUND. By the House of Commons International Development Committee. The WTO’s fifth Ministerial in Cancún, Mexico, collapsed on 14 September 2003 without reaching an agreement. This report tries to explain why it happened and points out the lessons that should be learned in the process such as: improvements in timing, organisation and substance. For further information see: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmintdev/92/92.pdf
"The WTO and the Cartagena Protocol: International Policy Coordination or Conflict?" by Grant E. Isaac in CURRENT AGRICULTURE, FOOD & RESOURCE ISSUES (4, 2003) pp. 116-123. This article presents a case study of the implications of overlapping multilateral paradigms - the World Trade Organisation and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety - for international market access of biotechnology-based agri-food products. For further information, see: http://128.233.156.252/j_html/isaac4-1.htm
"E-commerce and the Environment: Good News or Bad?" in the JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY. Vol. 6, Issue 2. A series of articles analyse how small decisions related to e-commerce can have large effects on the environment, and how the diverse and complex use of information technologies leads to unintended consequences and indirect impacts on the environment that are hard to predict. To access the articles see: http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE/e-commerce
"Energy and carbon embodied in the international trade of Brazil" in MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION STRATEGIES FOR GLOBAL CHANGE 8 (2, 2003) pp. 139-155. By Mauricio Tiomno Tolmasquim and Giovani Machado. In the last decades, structural changes in the Brazilian economy were closely related to changes in the country’s trade specialisation. This paper analyses to what extent energy use and its associated CO2 emissions of Brazil in the 90’s may be overloaded by changes in the country’s trade specialisation towards a more energy-intensive mix. The study finds that Brazil exported, in net terms, significant amounts of energy and carbon (C) embodied in goods traded with the rest of the world in the 90’s. In fact, some 6.6% of the final energy used by the industrial sector and around 7.1% of its C emissions are prompted by international trade. By overloading the country’s energy use and its associated environmental damage (both local and global), this situation seems to contribute to increase not only local but also global environmental damage, since C leakage from non-Annex I countries due to international trade may lead to higher C concentration in the atmosphere.
WTO Resources
UNDERSTANDING THE WTO. A new edition of the basic guide to the WTO is now available for download athttp://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/tif_e.htm
On the Move
Duncan Brack has stepped down as Head of the Sustainable Development Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He remains an Associate Fellow of the Institute and will continue to work on international environmental crime, trade and environment, and other environment issues. Richard Tarasofsky, formerly an independent international lawyer based in Berlin and specialising in trade, biodiversity, climate change, and European environmental law, has been appointed the new Head of the Sustainable Development Programme.