A Greenpeace campaigner presents EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy with contaminated soy.
If you care about...
- The environment and sustainability
- Health, poverty and equality
- Justice and corporate accountability
... then you should care about the WTO's agenda.
In fact, you should be very worried.
The WTO is extremely powerful. Despite it's rhetoric (it claims to promote everything from good government to world peace) the WTO is essentially a conduit for the largest economies in the world. That is, several western countries - and several multinational corporations.
While its members include developing nations, only the western countries yield any real influence in its decision making process. Worse, the big corporations really set the agenda.
The environment and sustainability
Governments attending the WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico from 10-14 September, 2003 will be discussing the expansion of the WTO's remit and capacity. These developments could have a serious negative effect on the global environment.
Of course the WTO will put trade before the environment - that's its objective. The WTO is so powerful that it can make trade rules more important than environmental rules. That's what's alarming.
There are many ways that the WTO already affects the environment. Put simply, increased trade = increased production = increased use of natural resources.
Resources are being used faster than they can be replenished. The oceans are being emptied of fish, ancient forests are being destroyed, and river basins are being sold off one by one to private drinking water companies.
Huge oil, gas, mining, pharmaceutical and agri-business multinationals keep expanding their operations at all costs, creating more and more pollution. Their sole goal - to make money, not to take care of our planet and health, now or for future generations.
Biotechnology companies, meanwhile, are attempting a corporate take-over of the entire food chain. Farmers, especially those in developing nations, have already lost out because of subsidies and tarrifs. Now, the WTO, led by the US and the biotech industry, plans to bully more countries into accepting GM seeds, GM crops and unlabelled GM foods.
Health, poverty and equality
The WTO has failed to deliver on agreements to give developing countries access to life-saving medicines.
Governments tried to present the WTO meeting held in Doha in November 2001 as a "development" round that would deliver economic benefits to developing countries in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific and Latin America.
It promised developing countries greater access to life-saving medicines, as well as greater access to markets for their agricultural goods (anything from produce to cotton, coffee and other crops that form a big part of some developing country economies).
But the promises made in Doha have not been kept. Developing countries have seen no sign of the medicines - because the US is blocking the agreement.
Justice and corporate power
The WTO is extending its power - and the power of the corporations driving it - into new areas.
A new investment agreement tabled for discussion at the WTO will extend both the power of the WTO and the corporations that drive it. These corporations will not be held accountable for their actions.
Read our "Freedon From Forced Trade" WTO weblog.
