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Southern Agenda on Trade & Environment |
In early 2002, ICTSD, together with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and a group of developing country institutions (the Regional and International Networking Group - Ring), launched the second phase of an ongoing project aimed at building capacity for developing countries on trade and environment issues at the WTO.
Entitled 'A Southern Agenda on Trade and Environment', the first phase sought to gather and present Southern perspectives on the trade and environment link. It built on extensive consultations with developing country trade policy representatives in Geneva, and compiled a comprehensive matrix of developing country and least-developed country proposals on trade and environment submitted thus far to the WTO. The results of Phase I were presented at the WTO Symposium on 'The Doha Development Agenda and Beyond' in May 2002.
Phase II, which builds upon the results of Phase I, endeavours to respond to the opportunity offered by the Doha mandate on trade and environment. The Doha mandate provides an opportunity for all parties to shape the agenda on trade and environment negotiations in more profound ways than might be possible on many other issues. This opportunity is particularly pertinent to developing countries, because the majority of them have been generally suspicious of environmental issues seeping into trade deliberations and accepted the Doha mandate on trade and environmental negotiations rather hesitantly, if not grudgingly. Furthermore, developing countries see an opportunity to broaden the trade and environment discussion to take place within a sustainable development framework.
Such an approach requires active engagement with the issue and, more importantly, the consultations conducted during Phase I of the project suggests that there is a certain degree of desire on behalf of developing countries to do so. Phase I also concluded that in order to fully engage, developing countries required enhanced capacity to identify regional priorities and transmit these to WTO negotiating positions.
As a result, Southern Agenda II aims to strengthen the capacity of trade negotiators, key national policymakers and regional actors in developing countries to determine priorities for promoting and negotiating proactive positions that reflect their own 'Southern Agenda' on environment and trade in the multilateral trading system.
The project is being carried out over a two-year period, and is based on six multistakeholder expert consultations in developing country regions that aim to bring forward regional priorities in trade and environment. The consultations will both feed into and run parallel to a Geneva-based consultation process involving WTO negotiators, in order to ensure that regional environmental priorities are reflected at the multilateral level. The first three regional consultations were held in 2003 and early 2004, for the regions of W. Africa, S. America and S/SE Asia. At least three are planned for the end of 2004 (for S/E Africa, W.Asia/N. Africa, and Central America).
In the course of the project, we are preparing regional Think Pieces from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Two Think Pieces -- from S. America and S/SE Asia -- have already been written, and provide innovative thinking towards an emerging Southern Agenda.
Two major research outputs have been mapped out. The first, Envisioning a Sustainable Development Agenda for Trade and Environment, will assemble the outputs of the consultations and provide the rationale behind a proactive developing country agenda on trade and environment. The second, The Trade and Environment Resourcebook, will consist primarily of a set of around 20 descriptive ‘entries’ on key issues related to understanding trade and environment discussions, each accompanied by a provocative state-of-the-art invited expert commentary. These publications will provide useful information to practitioners and involved observers while also pushing the discussion on these issues forward by highlighting cutting edge ideas that can inform existing and emerging debates.
