Editor’s Note

News Roundup

Event Announcement  
         Conference ‘WTO and South Asia: Lessons and Strategies’, 9-10^th March ’02, New Delhi, India

It has been ten years since the historic Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the year 1992. The forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2002 will present an opportunity for leaders from around the world to revisit the achievements and failures towards creating a better and sustainable world.  
 

Over the decade, debates on environment have witnessed many ups and downs. One of the significant developments is the setting up of World Trade Organisation in 1995. Debates are on regarding linkages between trade and environment. When ministers approved the results of the Uruguay Round negotiations in Marrakesh in April 1994, they took a decision to start a comprehensive work programme on trade and environment in the WTO. Since 1995, this work programme has been the focus of discussions in the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE).  
 

Many developing countries have been continuously opposing the linkages between trade and environment. They argue that it is tantamount to denying market access for their goods in the developed countries markets. However, the fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO, held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001 took certain decisions, especially regarding the relationship between WTO rules and multilateral environmental agreements, which may result in the mainstreaming of environment in the WTO acquis.  
 

The important issue is, are we serious enough to address trade and environment interface. The US refusal in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change not only shows its lack of commitment, but also raised doubts on the seriousness of addressing issues for sustainable development. 
   

 For sustainable development to benefit all (win-win-win for trade, development and the environment), one axiomatic condition is better North-South and South-South flow of financial resources and technologies. At the time of the Rio 1992, it was estimated that for implementing Agenda 21, the world require an approximate amount of $625bn a year, of which the international community would be responsible for mobilising about 20 percent, which comes to $125bn per year. This was in addition to the official development assistance (ODA) from the developed countries to the developing world, which was then about $80bn. A total of $200bn per year over a period of ten years was required to put the world onto a sustainable development path. Today, nine years after Rio, the total amount of money that has gone into implementation of Agenda 21 commitments is almost negligible.

At Rio, the quid pro quo between the developed and developing countries was based on “you sign the Convention and we finance Agenda 21,” which is one of the most publicised documents of the last decade, but has seen little action on the ground. Hence, the debate on trade and environment should move beyond linkages to ground level actions. Therefore, the biggest challenge in and beyond Johannesburg is to fix binding responsibility on countries regarding implementation of an agenda for sustainable development through provisions of financial resources and technologies.                                                       

         Pradeep S. Mehta, Editor

            Today, all across Africa, millions of children are going to work instead of school. They work on farms and plantations, in mines and quarries, in factories, in shops and as servants in homes. Some have been sold and trafficked into slave-like conditions. Others are forced into a living nightmare of prostitution or armed conflicts. Many of the football players who have gathered in Mali for the 2002 African Cup of Nations tournament have overcome similar circumstances of severe poverty to become the champions they are today.

            In this spirit of inspiration and hope, the International Labour Organisation is launching the ‘Red Card’ to child labour campaign in partnership with Confederation africaine de football (CAF) and the Comite d organisation de la Coupe d Afrique des Nations (COCAN). This campaign aims to seize the opportunity offered by the African Cup of Nations 2002 to make the public aware of the harsh reality of child labour and to encourage people to support the global movement against child labour.

More: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/textonly/ratification/redcampaign/redcard.htm   

            A new initiative has been launched to promote practices that help eradicate poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the Equatorial belt. The ‘Equator Initiative,’ which is headed by United Nations Development Programme in partnership with the Government of Canada, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the United Nations Foundation, will focus on capacity building, exchange grants and practical case studies to achieve its aims. It will continue beyond the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002.

More: http://www.undp.org/equatorinitiative

            The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to strengthen links with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The MOU, which was signed late January, fosters collaboration on issues such as transboundary haze, environmental education, state of environment assessment and reporting, and the development of environmental legislation.

More: http://www.roap.unep.org/html/nr/nr02-03.htm

            A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper titled “Does Globalisation Increase Child Labour? Evidence from Vietnam”, authored by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, considers the impact of liberalised trade policy on child labour in a developing country. While trade liberalisation entails an increase in the relative price of the exported product, trade theory provides ambiguous predictions on how this price change affects the incidence of child labour. In this paper, the authors exploit regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice to examine the relationship between price movements of a primary export and the economic activities of children.

Using a panel of Vietnamese households, it was found that reductions in child labour are increasing with rice prices. Declines in child labour are largest for girls of secondary school age, and a corresponding increase in school attendance for this group. Overall, rice price increases can account for almost half of the decline in child labour that occurs in Vietnam in the 1990s. Greater market integration, at least in this case, appears to be associated with less child labour. The results of this study suggest that the use of trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labour is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.

Complete Paper: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w8760

            The World Watch Institute, Washington DC, has released the 19^th edition of the institute’s annual review of the health of the planet and its people. This edition is dedicated to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which is scheduled to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, during August-September 2002. It also features a foreword by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about the importance of using the WSSD to accelerate a transition to sustainable development. The report includes chapters on climate change, farming, toxic chemicals, sustainable tourism, population, resource conflicts and global governance.        

More: http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/sow/2002/  

Stating that a large proportion of global aquaculture production comes from small-scale producers in developing countries and Low Income Food Deficit Countries, the publication highlights fish farming’s contribution to food security, poverty alleviation and social well being. Promoting fish farming in the face of some environmentalists’ reservations, the FAO also recognises that “sustainable use of aquatic resources can only be achieved through vigorous and combined efforts by all sectors involved: farmer cooperatives and agencies, regulators, policy makers and planners, scientists, NGOs and other aquatic resource users.”         

More:http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/OIS/PRESS_NE/PRESSENG/2001/pren0196.htm &

http://www.fao.org/fi/meetings/aq2000/tech_proc/third_mill.asp 

CUTS Centre for International Trade, Economics & Environment (CUTS-CITEE) has started a series of training seminars on WTO (World Trade Organisation) issues so as to understand and devise suitable policies for making Indian industries competitive in the emerging global scenario.

The first in this series was organised in September 2000 in Jaipur in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). During 17^th to 19^th January 2002, CUTS-CITEE organised the second in the series, focusing on textiles and clothing, in collaboration with the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad.

The objective of this training seminar was to educate practising managers and textile associates in India to tackle issues and problems pertaining to the textiles and clothing sector. There is considerable anxiety and concern among manufacturers and exporters in the textiles and clothing sector about the depressing export scenario, about their own competitiveness against imports, and about the impact of the provisions of the WTO on their markets. It is these concerns which were addressed in the three-day Seminar.

More: http://www.cuts-international.org/trainingseminar.htm

            CUTS Centre for International Trade, Economics & Environment (CUTS-CITEE) will be organising a conference ‘WTO and South Asia: Lessons and Strategies’ during 9^th and 10^th March 2002 in New Delhi, India. The purpose is to discuss lessons from the past and deliberate on strategies for the future, especially in the context of the Doha Ministerial Declaration of the World Trade Organisation. One of the objectives is to facilitate dialogues between different stakeholders so as to provide upward and downward linkages between research institutions, individual researchers and the civil society groups for better understanding and comprehension of multilateral trade agreements in the South Asian context.

More: http://www.cuts-international.org/forthcoming-events.htm#wto