News Roundup

ILO Appoints Liaison Officer in Myanmar

Ms. Hong-Trang Perret-Nguyen was appointed as the ILO Liaison Officer in Myanmar. Her appointment in Myanmar takes place in the framework of the understanding on the appointment of a Liaison Officer, which was reached between the ILO and the Government of Myanmar in March 2002. According to this understanding, her role covers all activities relevant to ensuring the prompt and effective elimination of forced labour in the country and she should be extended all facilities and support to that effect. As part of this mandate, the Liaison Officer, in cooperation with the authorities, will have to help to establish strategies to effectively address the root causes of the forced labour situation in Myanmar as identified in particular by a High-Level Team which visited the country in the autumn of 2001.

For More: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/pr/2002/40.htm     

U.S. Petitioned to Act Against Illegal EU Fishing

WWF, the conservation organisation, and the Recreational Fishing Alliance have joined in a petition to the U.S. government for trade sanctions against the European Union for "irresponsible and illegal fishing practices that injure Atlantic white marlin and bluefin tuna." They are petitioning the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to certify the EU under the Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen's Protective Act of 1967 for irresponsible fishing practices. Following certification under this amendment, the President may impose import restrictions on any product from the offending country. The petitioners say European practices have undermined the effectiveness of the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), a treaty that establishes quotas and management measures to maintain the populations of tuna and similar species that migrate across the Atlantic Ocean. Under Section 301 the President would be required to act if it is determined that the European Union has acted unlawfully.

For more: http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-04-19.asp#anchor2

UNEP Head Wants PIC Convention in Force by 2003

UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Klaus Toepfer on 29 Sept called for the speedy ratification of the Rotterdam Convention -- hopefully by mid 2003 -- which he believes will impose a "regime of transparency and honesty" restricting global trade and use of 31 harmful pesticides. Toepfer was speaking at the intergovernmental negotiating committee of the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, which wraps up on 4 October. While the chemicals in question are for the most part banned in developed countries, some are still in wide use in developing regions. The treaty stipulates that countries exporting chemicals damaging to health or the environment have to inform importing nations of the dangers they pose, while also making it illegal to trade in chemicals against the wishes of recipient countries.

For more: http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/02-10-02/inbrief.htm

Second Phase of Trade and Environment Task Force Launched

The second phase of a joint UNCTAD-UNEP Capacity-building Task Force (CBTF) on Trade, Environment and Development was launched in Johannesburg during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). Since its inception in 2000, the CBTF has supported a number of projects to assist developing countries in dealing with trade and environment-related development challenges. Training workshops in Cuba and Viet Nam centred on national case studies and discussed practical policy measures to help maximize the sustainable development gains of trade. Ongoing country projects in Indonesia and Lebanon are assisting policy makers to assess the environmental and developmental impacts of trade and trade policies.

For more: http://www.unctad.org/en/Press/pr0249en.htm

Studies and Reports

Core Labour Standards and FDI

This paper entitled “Core Labour Standards and FDI,” (published in the International Labour Review, Vol.141, No.1-2, 2002) authored by David Kucera, applies new country-level measures of labour standards – constructed from coding textual information and emphasising de facto considerations – in a cross-country econometric analysis of foreign direct investment inflows in the 1990s. The fundamental labour standards concern freedom of association and collective bargaining, child labour, and gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace. Consistent with prior studies, no solid evidence is found in support of what has been referred to as the “conventional wisdom”, namely that foreign investors favour countries with lower labour standards; indeed all evidence of statistical significance points in the opposite direction.

For More: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/publ/revue/sommaire/141-1-2.htm  

Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment? Sorting Out the Causality

What is the effect of trade on a country's environment, for a given level of GDP? Some have observed an apparent positive correlation between openness to trade and measures of environmental quality. But this could be due to endogeneity of trade, rather than causality. This paper, written by Jeffrey A. Frankel and Andrew K. Rose, uses exogenous determinants of trade geographical variables from the gravity model as instruments to isolate the effect of openness.

The finding is that trade may indeed have a beneficial effect on three measures of air pollution. Statistical significance is lacking for Particulate Matter, but is moderate for NO2, and high for SO2. Results for broader environmental measures are not as encouraging, but one can at least say that there is little evidence that trade has the detrimental effect on the environment that the race-to-the-bottom theory would lead one to expect. The larger effect appears to come via income itself: the results generally support the environmental Kuznets curve, which says that growth harms the environment at low levels of income and helps at high levels, and to support the proposition that openness to trade accelerates the growth process.

For complete paper: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W9201

Event Reports

Post Doha Scenario: The State of Play, New Delhi, 23 September 2002

“On Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the right to decide the quantum and sector of investment should be reserved with the nation state”, said Dr. Jagdish Shettigar, Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, India. He was speaking at a panel discussion on “Post-Doha Scenario: The State of Play”, organised by CUTS at New Delhi. The panel discussion was preceded by the release of a book titled “WTO and India: An Agenda for Action in the Post-Doha Scenario” written by Pradeep S Mehta with a foreword from Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati. More than 50 participants representing various stakeholder groups and ministries participated in this discussion. They favoured a pro-active approach to be followed by India in the ongoing new round of trade negotiations. 

For more: http://www.cuts-international.org/news-cuts.htm#New Round of WTO Talks 

Linkages: How Do We Bridge The Gap?, Nairobi, 19^th October 2002

"The idea of sanctions generated much heat in the debate on linkages between trade and labour standards. Therefore, in my opinion the World Trade Organisation is not the right place to discuss social issues, like labour standards," expressed, Alistair Smith of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute, South Africa. He was speaking at a dialogue on linkages, organised by CUTS, in association with EcoNews Africa, Nairobi. More than 30 participants from ten Eastern and Southern African countries participated in this meeting on labour and environmental standards and their relationship with trade, particularly within the scope of multilateral trade regime under the WTO. The other panellists were Yash Tandon, International South Group Network, Zimbabwe, Douglas Korsah-Brown, Friends of the Earth, Ghana, and Oduor Ong’wen of the EcoNews Africa.

For more: To be posted soon on www.cuts-international.org 

Event Announcement

Linkages: How Do We Bridge The Gap?, Amsterdam, 26^th November 2002

CUTS in association with South North Federation, Netherlands, is organising this event on Tuesday, the 26th of November at Amsterdam. The purpose is to conduct a dialogue between protagonists and antagonists on the contentious issues of labour and environmental standards in trade agreements. Trade diplomats, representatives of inter-governmental agencies, civil society organisations, academia, research institutions, trade unions and media are requested to participate. Similar meetings have been organised in the past at London, Washington D.C., Geneva, Brussels and Nairobi. More one planned in the future at Stockholm in November 2002, and a major seminar in April 2003 at Washington D.C. in association with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

For more: http://www.cuts-international.org/linkages-index.htm