The Fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization
has
failed to reach an agreement today. This failure is the
ìexpected” end of a
trade system ruled by the World Trade Organization with the
single minded
objective of trade liberalization. Greenpeace urges governments
to rapidly
convene an international conference with the mandate to provide
the basis
for the creation of an alternative trade system.
The WTO’s failure
in Cancun to engage developing nations in greater trade
liberalization
confirms the commonly shared diagnosis on this organization:
- An Internal Crisis of Legitimacy: the permanent lack of
transparency and democracy ultimately ended this meeting. For the
first time, a strong movement of resistance balanced the usual
arm-twisting by rich countries, with developing countries standing
together as a block to refuse dumped trade and the expansion of a
WTO mandate on new issues. Reinforcing this resistance, hundreds of
non-governmental organizations denounced the U.S. and EU push to
coerce WTO members into ill-fated negotiations.
- External Crisis: The WTO made the promotion of free trade for
the gain of private interests the ultimate goal, over and above all
other social, public and environmental objectives. The Cancun trade
talks have clearly failed to take seriously the need to give
priority to sustainable development and environmental protection.
The negotiations on issues that are most important to poorer
countries have continually been stalled, with little progress in
sight.
Greenpeace calls on governments to take the
unique opportunity of these crises to create an alternative
trade system.
Greenpeace is in favor of a multilateral, rules-based system,
but one that
has sustainable development and social rights as its core
principles. The
global community must actively end the policies that promote the
destruction
of ecosystems and human well-being. Therefore, Greenpeace urges
the global
community:
- To conduct a thorough assessment of the rules governing the
international trade system in order to reconfigure this system
towards achieving sustainable development.
- To convene an international conference with the mandate of
creating the conditions and modalities for an alternative trade
system. Such a conference should take place in a neutral forum,
preferably the UN, which is better suited to address social
well-being, environmental protection and economic development in a
balanced fashion.
