It is high time that governments reconcile their trade policies with their stated environmental policies and commitment.

Critics will claim that Greenpeace´s recommendations are not politically realistic because they contain conditionalities that are unacceptable to developing countries, especially the precautionary principle. After Seattle, some commentators claimed that the conference failed because US President Bill Clinton, and to some extent the European Union, attached the launch of a new round of trade liberalisation to environmental and social conditionalities that were unacceptable to developing countries.

This view is as simplistic and wrong as that of those who believe that it was the street demonstrators alone who prevented the WTO members from striking a deal in Seattle. At the heart of the failure of Seattle were the lack of involvement of developing countries in the decision-making (the so-called "green room" from which developing countries are left out) and the lack of access for the products of the least developed countries (LDCs) into the markets of the rich countries.

During and after Seattle, WTO Director-General Mike Moore launched direct attacks against environmental organisations, accusing them of disregarding the needs of developing countries and to be acting in favour of the rich countries. Yet, the practical reality shows that developing countries and environmental organisations can work very well and effectively together on the application of trade-related environmental principles on specific issues.

For example, a ban on the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes from OECD countries to non-OECD countries was adopted in 1994 within the framework of the Basel Convention essentially as a result of the combined work of the G77 countries with Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs, with the support of the members of the European Union. This decision of environmental justice was achieved against the will of the governments of the US, Canada and Australia who opposed the proposal. This waste trade ban has now entered into force, despite the fact that the US continues to refuse to ratify the Basel Convention!

More recently, in January 2000, only eight weeks after the Seattle conference of the WTO, the Biosafety Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (known as the Cartagena Protocol) reiterating the right of any country to say "no" to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the basis of the precautionary principle, was adopted as a result, again, of a joint effort of developing countries with the European Union and environmental NGOs.

Again this was achieved against the will, and despite the forceful opposition of the so-called Miami Group of crop exporting countries steered by the US, Canada and Australia and supported by the large US and European-based transnational corporations with vested interests in the expansion of GMOs in food and agriculture. The developing countries were the largest group demanding a strong Biosafety Protocol, and the outcome, supported by the environmental NGOs, was their victory.

Also in the framework of the negotiations that led to the adoption in May 2001 of a Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants it was the US, Canada and Australia that were yet again opposed to progress in environmental policy against the wishes of the majority comprised of the developing countries. The same pattern, as is well known, also occurs in the framework of on-going discussions with regard to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where the US, Canada and Australia are attacking the developing countries.
Clearly, the perception of Mike Moore - who is openly a militant advocate of the proliferation of GMOs in food and agriculture - does not coincide with what happened in the Biosafety, Basel, POPs, Kyoto and other negotiations.

Greening Doha - Greenpeace resommendations to the conference.

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