ENVIRONMENT @ HONG KONG: MOMENTUM ON FISH, LITTLE PROGRESS OTHERWISE

Environment-related negotiations clearly took a backseat vis-à-vis the main negotiating priorities in at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference on 13-18 December in Hong Kong (see In Brief, this issue). Nevertheless, environment-related discussions cropped up in a number of informal, green room and plenary discussions, as well as on the sidelines of the conference. While fisheries subsidies were not negotiated at the WTO meeting, a high-level press conference succeeded in raising public attention around the issue and may help to stimulate negotiations after the Hong Kong meeting. Despite valiant attempts to place environmental goods and services and the intellectual property rights-biodiversity linkage higher on the political agenda, virtually no progress was achieved in these areas, putting pressure on the proponents of these negotiations to mobilise support over the next few months.

Fisheries subsidies

The 7 December draft Ministerial text on fisheries subsidies -- along with the rest of the text on WTO rules (anti-dumping, subsidies and countervailing measures) -- was left unchanged in the final Ministerial Declaration (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 9 September 2005). The Ministerial Declaration calls on Members to strengthen disciplines on fisheries subsidies, including by identifying and prohibiting subsidies that contribute to over-capacity and over-fishing. It notes that "appropriate and effective special and differential treatment" should form an integral part of the negotiations, highlighting the sector's importance to poverty reduction, livelihood and food security concerns. The text for the first time explicitly links subsidies to over-capacity and over-fishing and acknowledges the need for addressing this link, overcoming strong resistance from Japan and Korea in the early stages of the Doha Round on negotiating fisheries subsidies disciplines.

Some observers, including several small vulnerable coastal states, expressed concern in the corridors over the scope of the text given that it does not explicitly restrict discussions to trade-distorting subsidies. Others also voiced concerns that the WTO should not become the arbitrator defining and deciding about the condition of a fishery, calling for other institutions, such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and regional fisheries management bodies, to be involved in the negotiations and resulting disciplines.

On the sidelines of the Ministerial meeting, a high-level press conference managed to keep the issue on the table. Senior officials from the US, EU, New Zealand, the Philippines, Brazil, Chile and Senegal joined forces with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the environmental group WWF to call for urgent action on disciplining fisheries subsidies in the WTO. Pointing to the dire state of global fisheries, they urged Members to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the Doha mandate to promote trade liberalisation that also safeguards environmental and social objectives. New Zealand, the US and Chile -- all members of the so-called 'Friends of Fish' group which is the driving force behind the negotiations -- emphasised the environmental dimension of the talks. Brazil, Senegal and the Philippines stressed the need for effective special and differential treatment to account for the particular needs of developing countries. Many saw the fact that the EU and US (and other Friends of Fish) as well as Senegal came together to push for intensified negotiations as an important symbolic push for the talks.

Environmental goods and services

Under the trade and environment negotiating mandate in paragraph 31 of the Doha Declaration, only environmental goods and services (EGS) made a noticeable appearance in Hong Kong. These discussions related to the mandate embodied in paragraph 31(iii) which calls for the reduction (or possibly elimination) of tariff and non-tariff barriers to EGS. Discussions reflected ongoing divisions over the approach to take to liberalising EGS trade. Developed and newly industrialised countries, such as the US, New Zealand, the EU, Chinese-Taipei and Korea, favoured a 'list approach', i.e. identifying a list of environmental goods for liberalisation, and were looking for language that would steer talks in that direction. Many developing countries, on the other hand, would like to keep options open for other approaches, such as India's 'environmental project approach' which would allow countries to temporarily liberalise trade in EGS associated with self-designated environmental projects.

During informal meetings in Hong Kong, the list supporters and India managed to agree on common text that would have instructed Members to clarify the coverage of goods and their relation to services, taking into account the capacity constraints of developing countries and the centrality of the environmental rationale of the negotiations. However, a number of Members -- including South Africa, Colombia, Egypt and other Latin American countries -- opposed the text. These countries feared that the proposed language could be seen as favouring the list approach and could change the mandate of the negotiations.

Due to time constraints and a general reluctance to move the negotiations to the Green Room level given the relative importance of the issue, countries in the end agreed on brief, non-committal language that simply instructs Members to "expeditiously complete the work" under paragraph 31(iii). While this solution is unlikely to provide the impetus to the negotiations that some delegations had been looking for, some felt that the informal discussions had at least served to help build greater understanding of the respective perspectives among the negotiating parties. Others also expressed satisfaction with the fact that the virtual agreement on the alternative text had shown a growing acknowledgement of the capacity constraints that developing countries face as well as the centrality of environmental objectives.

Intellectual property and biodiversity

Ahead of and during the Ministerial meeting, India was the driving force behind efforts to place discussions on the relationship of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) high on the political agenda (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 9 December 2005). India would have liked to see an explicit negotiating mandate to be included in the Ministerial Declaration calling for an amendment to the TRIPS Agreement that would require patent applicants to disclose the origin of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, along with evidence of prior informed consent and benefit-sharing in their application. Brazil, Kenya and Peru also joined in the effort, albeit with various degrees of forwardness. Brazil raised the issue in the Heads of Delegation meeting, but generally kept a comparatively low profile. Kenya circulated a written proposal that would have narrowed down work on the TRIPS-CBD relationship to the three requirements in the TRIPS Council, but did not raise the issue in the negotiations.

Peru's proposal provided the weakest language of the ones put forward by simply suggesting intensifying discussion on the three requirements. Some observers were surprised at the proposal's low level of ambition given the central role that Peru has so far played in pushing the issue in the WTO and implementing related obligations at the national level. Speculations were raised over a possible link between the Peruvian stance and the recently concluded free trade agreement with the US which includes a side-letter that highlights the use of contracts on access to genetic resources or traditional knowledge.

The EU would have been willing to support an explicit reference to negotiations on the CBD-TRIPS relationship if it had been coupled with a similar mandate for negotiations to extend the additional protection already provided to geographical indications for wines and spirits to other products (GI extension). However, in the end -- to the great frustration of both India and the EU -- neither of the two negotiating mandates found mention in the Declaration due to stiff resistance from the US and others, including Canada and Australia. These countries have repeatedly argued that no conflict existed between the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD and thus no amendment to the TRIPS Agreements was needed.

The text in the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration remained the same as included in the 7 December draft Declaration, simply taking note of the work undertaken on the TRIPS-CBD relationship and GI extension under Paragraph 12(b) of the Doha Declaration (on implementation issues). Nevertheless, the proponents of negotiations on the CBD-TRIPS relationship can claim some modest progress, given that the Hong Kong text for the first time adds the CBD-TRIPS relationship as one of the issues explicitly mentioned under the implementation mandate (along with GI extension).

ICTSD Reporting.