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The Green Guide

WTO Attempts to Silence Opposition
By Meeting in Qatar

Why do trade rules trump others?
Toronto Star

November 9, 2001 Friday Ontario Edition, Joy Dufay

Unlike the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, there won't
be street battles at the current WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar. For one,
they are illegal. And it's an expensive trip to end up in Qatari prison:
A ticket on the government plane from Ottawa costs $4,000.

Some public interest representatives will be there, however, as the WTO
tries to pick up the pieces after the implosion of talks in Seattle.
There, disagreement pummelled the talks on two fronts.

Outside, young people, environmentalists and workers stood together in
demanding the WTO's impacts on their jobs, communities and planet be
blunted in favour of trade that put people not corporations first.

Inside, the talks collapsed under their own weight as countries became
gridlocked in disagreements over agricultural subsidies and genetically
engineered foods. Developing countries played a critical role in halting
the talks as they were justifiably outraged at how corporate interests
trumped theirs.

In Qatar, there will be only a few Canadians not representing
governments or corporations. Greenpeace will be there, bringing WTO
victims to the delegates on our flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior,
currently in Doha's harbour. The stories told by these people are the
reason the WTO needs to abandon its new round of talks and, instead,
fundamentally improve the rules it has today.

Rev. Thomas Kocherry is on the Rainbow Warrior. He works with
traditional fishing communities in India and sees first-hand how
offshore fishing fleets have harmed the ability of local citizens to
make a living. Under WTO rules, countries are hampered in protecting the
needs of communities from foreign corporate interests.

Tom Wylie is in Qatar, after travelling from his farm in North Dakota
where he lost $10,000 when his soybeans were contaminated with
genetically engineered pollen from a neighbour's field. His country and
ours is trying to eliminate the ability of countries to choose GE-free
food by using WTO rules. This is simply ironic, for, in the name of free
trade, these rules would hamper the ability of consumers to choose what
they would like to buy.

Nygenjy Yorongar, a human rights lawyer from Chad, will be on board,
too. He was jailed and tortured in 1998 after organizing protests
against an oil pipeline that threatened ancient forests. The WTO has an
impact on him because it prohibits actions by countries to avoid
products produced at the expense of human rights or the environment.

As an example, the United States threatened to impose sanctions against
Japan to protest that nation's expansion of its whaling activities.
Japan threatened to assert its WTO rights against American pressure and
the U.S. defence of whales promptly vanished.

At issue in Qatar is not whether trade will be rules-based, but in whose
interests those rules will be made. Though our numbers will be small,
public interest groups will be making the case that the rules must allow
for environmental protection and the democratic right for citizens to
decide in their community's interests. Yes, even above the right of a
mammoth transnational corporation to make a profit.

Greenpeace favours international rules. Our organization has fought for
30 years for rules that protect Antarctica and whales, that ban
persistent toxic chemicals, that require countries to reduce their
climate-changing emissions and protect their ancient forests.

Indeed, concurrent with the WTO meeting, there is a Kyoto Protocol
meeting in Morocco and a Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in
Montreal. Greenpeace will be at both, advocating clear, strong rules.

The world works hard to negotiate environmental treaties, yet the WTO
supersedes most of them by requiring that environmental protection be
done in "the least trade restrictive way."

Despite this clear threat to environmental policies, Ottawa is not
sending any representatives to the WTO from ministries other than trade
or agriculture.

This is wrong, for we already see the impacts of the WTO trumping the
environment. Sri Lanka recently backed off its ban of genetically
engineered organisms due to WTO pressure. The spectre of a WTO challenge
is daunting, particularly for developing nations, meaning environmental
laws often never see the light of the day. The situation is exacerbated
by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which often insist on
WTO compliance as a condition of loans.

Not that developed nations are immune, since the WTO disallows the use
of the precautionary principle that used to be central to public health.
(The principle dictates that something must be proven safe before use,
as opposed to being introduced and then proven unsafe.) A perfect
example is Europe's ban on sex-hormone-laced beef from North America
that ran afoul of the WTO, which imposed a punitive tax on European
exports.

At issue in Qatar is a new round of talks. Opposing a new round does not
mean opposing trade or opposing rules. It means supporting the right of
an AIDS patient in Africa to afford his drugs, the right of a farmer in
Manitoba to grow the crops she wants and the right of a fisherman in
India to the livelihood that has sustained his family and community for
centuries.

Our numbers may be smaller in Doha, but we will still be watching.

Jo Dufay is the campaigns director for Greenpeace Canada. She was at the
1999 talks in Seattle and is in Qatar with the Rainbow Warrior.