WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/TE/W/43 
25 August 2004 
 (04-3562) 
Committee on Trade and Environment 
Special Session Original:   Spanish 
 
 
 
STATEMENT BY COLOMBIA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXISTING 
WTO RULES AND SPECIFIC TRADE OBLIGATIONS (STO S) SET OUT IN 
MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENTS (MEA S) 
 
Statement by Colombia in the Committee on Trade and Environment Special Session  
at its Meeting of 22 June 2004  
 
Paragraph 31(i ) 
 
 
 The following communication is being circulated at the request of the delegation of Colombia
. 
 
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1. Having considered the main proposals from Memb ers' submissions on paragraph 31(i) of the 
Doha Ministerial Declaration, Colombia would like to present its position on various aspects of the mandate under that paragraph.   
I. MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENTS 
2. Colombia could support the following criteri a for determining what should constitute an 
"MEA" in the context of paragraph 31(i): 
-  An MEA should be multilateral :  It should have been signed by a considerable number 
of countries, as an indication of a general in terest in the environmental objective of the 
MEA, and it should have been negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations or its 
specialized agencies.  
 
- It should be in force:   Although certain proposals (such as that submitted by the United 
States in TN/TE/W/20) indicate that the impor tant factor is whether any specific trade 
obligations warrant inclusion in the analys is being carried out by the Committee on 
Trade and Environment (CTE) irrespective of whether or not the MEA in question is in 
force, it is clear to Colombia that review  of any conflicts or incompatibilities between 
STOs in MEAs and existing WTO rules will be possible only where the MEA is in force.    
  Review of STOs will involve an informati on exchange between the CTE Special Session 
and the relevant MEA Secretariats, which will likewise be possible only for MEAs that 
are in force.  Furthermore, Secretariats  taking part in such CTE Special Session 
proceedings must receive directions from the Parties to the MEAs on the purposes of their participation as observers and the information exchanges. 
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 - It should be open:   The MEA should be open to accession by States that did not 
participate in its negotiation and should prefer ably have a considerable number of parties 
that are Members of the WTO as well. 
 3. Another important factor to take  into account is that an MEA's annexes and any amendments 
to its original text are an integral part of the agreement, according to the provisions of the 
1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.  Therefore, any STOs identified in MEA annexes 
and amendments on the basis of the criteria eventu ally set by the CTE Special Session would also 
form part of the analysis exercise. 
II. SPECIFIC TRADE OBLIGATIONS 
4. As the proposals and approaches submitted to da te have shown, defining the term "STO" may 
involve consideration of many factors and a wide  variety of options, ranging from STOs that are 
expressly set out in an MEA to those that a St ate party may deem necessary to achieving the 
agreement's objectives.  
5. Colombia considers well-founded the comments submitted by Argentina (TN/TE/W/2) and 
India (TN/TE/W/23) to the effect that the Doha ma ndate refers explicitly to STOs that are mandatory 
and are expressly set out in the text of the MEA, in other words, provisions that do not involve 
mandatory action by a Party to an MEA or that allow the Party to use the measures it deems 
necessary to achieve the objectives of the MEA, would not have STO status.  
6. Nevertheless, as Canada affirms in its proposal (TN/TE/W/22) " an examination of trade 
related provisions ... reveals that an obligation may be contained in one specific article or a 
combination of several articles that taken toge ther could constitute a specific trade obligation " and 
"trade related provisions in MEAs may also in clude processes with a discretionary element which 
further complicates the analysis of STOs ", which indicates that STOs can be spread over a series of 
MEA provisions, under which States Parties are required in specific circumstances to adopt certain measures in order to achieve the MEA's objective, and that they can definitely  have a strong bearing 
on the rules of the international trading system. 
7. Let us reconsider the example set forth in Artic le 4.2(d) of the Basel Convention, which calls 
on each Party to take the appropriate measures to " ensure that the transboundary movement of 
hazardous wastes and other wastes is reduced to the minimum consistent with the environmentally 
sound and efficient manage ment of such wastes, and is conduc ted in a manner which will protect 
human health and the environment against th e adverse effects which may result from such 
movement ".  In this case, the measure is mandatory, and transboundary movement may be qualified as 
international trade. 
8. The exercise of identifying STOs could be lim ited to a rigid interpretation of the Doha 
mandate and refer exclusively to STOs expressly men tioned in the texts of MEAs, but this would limit 
the objectives set out in the Doha mandate and th e Johannesburg Plan of Implementation of the 
World Summit on Sustainable Development, in which re ference is made to strengthening the mutually 
supportive relationship between trade and the environment. 
9. All the above affords grounds for considering that, in addressing the Doha mandate on the 
relationship between the STOs in MEAs and exis ting WTO rules, the CTE Special Session should 
adopt a progressive and phased approach, in other wo rds, it should ordinarily limit itself to those   
 
 
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 MEAs which, primarily, are of the greatest interest  to WTO Members and which, in addition, are in 
force, i.e.:  
- Convention on International Trade in E ndangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora 
(CITES); 
- The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; 
- Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes 
and their Disposal; 
- Convention on Biological Diversity. 
 10. Work should thus continue with a view to identifying in the aforementioned MEAs such 
STOs as are expressly mentioned in the text and are mandatory.   
11. Thereafter, the process should go on to establis h the relationship of those STOs with existing 
WTO rules. 
12. As to whether decisions of the Parties to an MEA generate STOs other than those set forth in 
the text of the agreement that ought likewise to be considered in the light of existing WTO rules, this 
question could be taken up later,  which need not preclude scheduling such decisions for discussion as 
a source of STOs in any work timetable that may be drawn up.  
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