Why does WWF work on trade & investment issues?
WWF's Living Planet Report - as well as other authoritative literature - indicates that many critical environmental problems are only going to worsen in the coming years.
This is due to a variety of factors, including the increased pressure being placed on finite natural resources from unsustainable consumption and production patterns, and the problems associated with current development models.It has become increasingly clear that success in conserving the world's biological diversity will be dependent upon reforming the way international institutions manage the global economy.
In response to this imperative, WWF is increasingly being called upon to direct its attention to a set of “global challenges”, such as biodiversity loss, climate change and HIV/AIDS. There has been a tendency in the past to pigeonhole such global challenges as “developmental”, “environmental” or “economic”. Such distinctions however make little sense, as these challenges are all increasingly interconnected.
Trade and investment flows often form an important part of the fabric of these interconnections, and many global challenges can be engaged, in part, through the rules that govern these flows. This is not, of course, to suggest that such rules alone can equip us to meet these challenges. But adequate rules can form an important part of the response, whilst inadequate rules can certainly make the problems worse. The importance of fair trade rules in addressing global poverty problems have been highlighted by campaigns such as “Make Poverty History”, focusing on the crucial and simultaneous challenges of correcting injustices in world trade, relieving the burden of debt, and making aid more effective.
Unless international trade rules and practices are shaped to contribute to meeting global challenges, they will at best divert attention from the urgency of addressing them, and at worst undermine the development of other processes intended to do so.
Sooner or later the role of trade rules in meeting these global challenges will need to be re-examined. WWF believes that there are several issues, pertaining to the entire international trade rules agenda, that seem clear:
• The range of global challenges that confront us can be met only through the concerted engagement of both developed and developing countries. This kind of engagement will emerge only when developed countries take significant practical steps to demonstrate that they can move beyond viewing international trade negotiations as just another vehicle to promote their short-term national self-interest.
• Whilst there are clearly occasions on which several of these global challenges can be addressed simultaneously through so-called “win-win” policies, it will often be the case that balances must be struck, and trade-offs made, between different outcomes. Exclusive emphasis on those instances where “win-win” solutions seem possible risks postponing more thorough – and politically difficult – choices.
• These balances must be struck in an ongoing, context-dependent, transparent and participatory way, with adequate safeguards against protectionism and privileging the urgent needs of developing countries.
• The current expertise of the WTO and other multilateral and bilateral trade negotiation fora, leave them ill-equipped to strike these balances. In meeting global challenges it will also be necessary to draw on the expertise of other international bodies.
• Serious engagement with these challenges requires a long-term perspective. This is in part because many of them will intensify during the years to come. But it is also because we have to make sure that we address immediate challenges in a systemic way, rather than through short-term solutions that risk storing up problems for the future.
In light of this, WWF is exploring new ways of working with progressive governments, in particular in key emerging economies – the global leaders of tomorrow – to put sustainable development at the heart of international decision-making processes.
