UNEP head for cooperation on trade and environment

by Lean Ka-Min

Geneva, 24 Oct 2000 - The Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today emphasized the “absolute necessity” of cooperation between the trade and environmental communities in negotiating challenges in the areas of trade, environment and development.

Speaking at the WTO’s Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), Klaus Toepfer called for trade and environment institutions to work together to craft the policy responses to the crises of poverty and environmental degradation so that the increasingly globalized economy can be made a sustainable one.

“The trade and environment communities can no longer work on the problem and its solution in our own little sealed boxes,” stressed the UNEP head.

Drawing attention to the growing income gap between developed and developing countries and to the grim poverty situation, Toepfer highlighted the need to go beyond addressing trade and environment issues and to integrate development concerns in working towards sustainability.

“Sustainability has three elements: an economic one, a social one and an environmental one,” he noted. “While UNEP’s mandate requires that it focus on the third [element], the policies and tools that this institution designs must be economically viable and efficient, and must also help countries and communities achieve their often pressing need for poverty alleviation and sustainable economic development.”

In this regard, Toepfer pointed out that the economic, environmental and developmental effects of trade liberalization at the national level have to be assessed in line with sustainable-development concerns.  UNEP’s country-level work on the environmental assessment of trade liberalization, he said, is designed to foster development while also addressing environmental concerns.

In his presentation, Toepfer also drew attention to the application of economic instruments which are not in consonance with the objective of sustainable development. The UNEP head said environmentally damaging subsidies, which also limit market access and development prospects for developing countries, are a clear priority for policy reform.

With regard to agriculture, Toepfer said UNEP intends to develop its work in the sector to help identify and initiate the subsidy reductions and reforms necessary to reduce over-exploitation and achieve sustainability - “reforms which can also increase market access that is so desperately needed by many developing countries.”

On the much-debated issue of the interaction between multilateral environment agreements and the international trade regime, Toepfer said developing a “coherent relationship” between MEAs and the WTO will be a vital element in creating a sustainable global economy.

Uncertainty surrounding the interaction must be reduced, utilizing an approach that, while not ignoring tensions that can arise between the trade and environment regimes, works towards the objective of maximizing synergies between the two. Under such an approach, it is necessary to recognize, among others, that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation which must be addressed in developing policy solutions, and that the environmental impacts of trade liberalization as well as the economic and trade impacts of MEAs have to be assessed.

The task of building a sustainable global economy, the UNEP head declared, requires the cooperation of relevant international institutions and of all countries. This will, in turn, “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 [Earth Summit] Principles, including cost internalization, the Polluter Pays Principle, Common but Differentiated Responsibility and the Precautionary Approach/Principle,” concluded Toepfer.

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