WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/CTE/W/179
28 November 2000
(00-5120)
Committee on Trade and Environment Original:  English
MEA INFORMATION SESSION
24 OCTOBER 2000
Statement by the Executive Director of UNEP, Dr. Klaus Töpfer
1. It is with great pleasure that I have accepted Mr. Moore's invitation to address you here today.
It gave me equal pleasure to welcome him to the event we hosted yesterday in collaboration withmultilateral environment agreements, in the Palais des Nations.
2. Such meetings and cooperation between trade and environment institutions are, of course,
more than just a question of pleasure.  They are an absolute necessity.  Current trends and recent
events have shown that "business as usual" is no l onger an option – for either the global environment
or the multilateral trading system.  Ongoing, and in many cases accelerating, environmentaldegradation around the world shows there is much more we have to do in environmental terms.  WTO
disputes and the Seattle Ministerial show the dang ers of too many expectations being loaded onto one
institution to solve all the problems related to trade, environment and development.
A sustainable global economy
3. We face the enormous challenge of making an increasingly globalized economy a sustainable
one.  No individual country or multilateral institution can do this on its own – we have to cooperate in
developing our understanding of how that economy, the environment and human society interact.  We
have to cooperate in crafting the policy responses to the crises that face us – and in particular, I mean
both those of poverty and environmental degradation.
4. My message to you here today is that we, i.e. the trade and environment communities, can no
longer work on the problem and its solution in our own little sealed boxes.  Neither can we tolerate
deadlock inside our institutions, which prevents us from crafting solutions.  UNEP's meeting onEnhancing Synergies and Mutual Supportiveness of MEAs and the WTO on 23 October and the MEA
Information Session in the CTE today are about coming together to find ways to innovate, to break
deadlock, mobilize resources and move forward.  They are about international institutions coming
together to provide a coherent, overarchin g framework for national policymakers to build
sustainability from the ground up.
5. Crucially, it is not just about trade and environment – it is about trade, environment and
development.  The income gap between developed and developing countries continues to grow and
World Bank figures show that nearly half of the planet's human population is living on $2 a day or
less.  UNEP understands this challenge, and I believe that one of my main tasks here today is to
convince you of that by showing you how we integrate that concern into our work programme.
Barriers to sustainability
6. Sustainability has three elements:  an economic one, a social one and an environmental one.
While UNEP's mandate requires that it focus on the third one, the policies and tools that this
institution designs must be economically viable and efficient, and must also help countries andWT/CTE/W/179
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communities achieve their often pressing need for poverty alleviation and sustainable economic
development.
7. In trade terms, this means that the policy to ols we offer must exploit the efficiency gains
offered by trade, and must not create unfair barriers to trade.  Inefficiency and trade protectionism,
whether it is "green" or otherwise, are both barriers to sustainable development.
8. The other major barrier for many countries in the world is lack of financial, technical and
technological resources.  This was reflected in the outcome of the Rio Earth Summit as a commitment
by developed countries to provide finance and technology on the one hand, while expanding market
access on the other hand.  These also constitute some kind of criteria against which you can test the
work programme and policies designed by UNEP.  In the remainder of this presentation I provide a
sample of our work, much of it collaborative, in four related areas.
Capacity Building
9. A poor understanding of the complex linkages between trade, environment and development,
and a lack of technical capacity and financial resources prevent the identification and formulation of
appropriate policy responses in many countries.
10. I understand that lack of capacity and resources are often the root cause of failure to integrate
trade and environment policies.  The recently launched UNEP-UNCTAD Capacity Building TaskForce (CBTF) on trade, environment and development, has been established to address this problem
directly.  The overwhelming response we have had to our call for proposals for the CBTF –
over 30 projects proposed by 24 countries – suggest s that many developing countries both recognize
the importance of these issues, and the need to build their capacity to address them.
11. I would urge more developed countries to contribute to the Trust Fund that we have
established to fund the CBTF, as both a practical step for improved policy-making and as a way to
build confidence and trust between North and South on these issues.  In this way the CBTF embodies
both capacity building and a form of financial and technical assistance from developed countries.
Assessment of trade liberalization
12. Assessment of the economic, environmental and developmental effects of trade liberalization,
at the national level, is a key to applying this policy reform in a manner which supports sustainable
development.  Effective assessment will guide successful policy integration.  Thus, for example,
UNEP's country-level work on the environmental as sessment of trade liberalization is designed to
foster development, while also addressing environmental concerns.  These projects are being
undertaken by nationally based institutions and experts, in close contact with the government, and
with the involvement of other stakeholders, notably business and NGOs.  Both the assessment itself,
and the policy responses designed from them, spring from country-level, multi-stakeholder processes,which will provide governments with practical and cost-effective policy packages.
13. Such projects are currently under way in Argentina, China, Ecuador, Nigeria, Senegal and
Tanzania, in sectors ranging from banana production to fisheries.  Capacity-building is also an
integral element of these assessments, which aim to provide the information necessary to design
policies which maximize the net economic benefits of trade to the country. Furthermore, theexperience of these researchers is being fed into another UNEP project, to develop a reference manual
for integrated assessment of trade-related policies, which will provide a menu of options for
governments wishing to undertake their own assessments.
14. I hope that at a future CTE meeting it will be possible for those nationally based country
project leaders to give presentations on their work.  I believe it will be more compelling if they comeWT/CTE/W/179
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and describe this work directly to you, and illustrate how it is constantly being adapted to local needs
and conditions.
Economic instruments and market incentives
15. Distorted world markets and a failure to apply economic instruments which support
sustainable development, remain a critical problem.  It will be necessary to remove those marketdistortions, which damage the environment or hinder development prospects, as well as to develop
market-based instruments, which can achieve objectives such as the internalization of environmental
costs.  UNEP is already working in both these areas,  most recently by initiating an assessment of the
extent to which the Polluter Pays Principle has been implemented since its inclusion in the
Rio Declaration in 1992.
16. Environmentally damaging subsidies, which also limit market access and development
prospects for developing countries, are another clear priority for policy reform.  UNEP has beenworking on the issue of fisheries subsidies since 1997.  I was encouraged by developments in Seattle,
where momentum built for negotiations on rules to discipline these subsidies.  Reducing such
subsidies can not only benefit marine ecosystems, but also safeguard the fisheries upon which
developing country fleets and artisanal fishermen depend.  The sea is the primary source of protein for
many poor people.  UNEP is seeking to expand its programme in this area, both in analytical termsand by engaging more countries in efforts to secure subsidy reform.
17. The agricultural sector offers similar win-wi n opportunities, on an even larger scale and of
even more importance for poverty alleviation, given the number of livelihoods world-wide that are
dependent on it.  UNEP intends to develop its work in this sector to help identify and initiate the
subsidy reductions and reforms necessary to achieve sustainability;  reforms which can also increasemarket access that is so desperately n eeded by many developing countries.
Global economic and environmental governance
18. Developing a coherent relationship between MEAs and the WTO will be a vital element in
creating a sustainable global economy.  Discussions on this issue in the WTO's CTE have perhaps
deepened understanding of some elements of th e relationship, but have not reduced the uncertainty
surrounding the interaction of these two legal regimes.  This we must do because for as long as
uncertainty remains, there is the possibility of conflict between provisions of the WTO and MEAs,
and because there remain many unfulfilled synergies between the two systems.
19. The meeting organized by UNEP yesterday, in  close collaboration with UNEP-administered
conventions and in consultation with the WTO and UNCTAD secretariats, focused on concrete
examples of synergies and potential tensions between the trade and environment regimes.  In
comparison to many previous approaches to this  issue, which focused narrowly on trade-related
tensions, the meeting yesterday focused more on the potential synergies.  Technical assistance,
capacity-building and technology transfer provisions to be found in MEAs featured substantially in
this discussion.  This focus arose from UNEP's own careful analysis on this issue, in collaboration
with the MEAs themselves, the WTO Secretariat and UNCTAD.
20. The meeting did not ignore tensions that can arise from the use of trade measures in MEAs,
nor did it avoid the issue of how dispute settlement systems in the two regimes might relate to each
other.  However, in its treatment of all issues, the objective was maximizing synergies and reducing
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21. Some key points arising from the meeting were:
• More emphasis was needed on enhancing communication and dialogue between
developing and developed countries;
• there is a need to enhance coordination between the trade and environment ministries
at the national level;
• capacity building was acknowledged as an important area requiring the concerted
efforts of UNEP, the MEAs and the WTO;
• the WTO and UNEP should provide substantive input to each other’s work and
workshops;
• WTO, UNEP and MEAs should analyse which trade measures work and which don’t
work, to help ensure that trade measures have a positive outcome;
• UNEP and MEAs should deal with non-compliance issues;
• there is a need for more supportive measures such as technology transfer, financial
transfer, the use of market incentives and capacity building to achieve sustainable
development;
• there is a need to develop win-win scenarios between WTO and MEAs, especially the
Convention to Combat Desertification, CBD and CITES;
• poverty is a major cause of environment degradation, which must be addressed in
developing policy solutions;  and
• assessment of the environmental impacts of trade liberalization, as well as the
economic and trade impacts of MEAs, was emphasized as an area requiring specialattention.
22. Today, we are circulating a draft of the Chairman's Summary of that meeting, including a
section on possible next steps, to secure the input of the participants before finalization.
Conclusion
23. The work outlined above is being developed in  a way that builds cross-linkages between the
different activities.  The CBTF will call on the assistance of both MEAs and the WTO in the
implementation of its work at national and regional levels.  The CBTF in turn can help implement
capacity-building provisions in MEAs.  The work on environmental and integrated assessment will
feed into the design of more efficient, trade-neutral and environmentally friendly economicinstruments and can help guide subsidy reform and reduction.
24. Building a sustainable global economy will require the cooperation of other relevant
international institutions, going beyond the WTO, MEAs, UNCTAD and UNEP.  It will also require
the willing cooperation of all countries.  That will require dialogues and consensus-building,
involving all the stakeholders, both to build trust and accurately define the objectives of policy
integration.  It will also require careful analysis and policy formulation to operationalize the
Rio Principles, including cost internalization, the Polluter Pays Principle, common but differentiatedresponsibility and the precautionary approach/principle.
25. That is a daunting task – in both technical te rms and in terms of maintaining the necessary
balance between the economic, social and environmental elements of sustainability.  I am extending
UNEP's hand in cooperation, in the hope of receiving yours, which we need to complete the task.
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