HK 2005 WTO 6th Ministerial Conference

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HK05 CIEL Participation
HK05 CIEL/FoE-US FTAs
HK05 ICTSD-BioRes
HK05 ICTSD-IISD 1105

 

The WTO's 6th Ministerial Conference

Hong Kong, Dec. 13-18, 2005

and Trade & Environment Issues

 

 

As things presently stand, the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference has been successful in keeping the momentum going but at the price of much reduced expectations in many areas. Regrettably, this observation applies very particularly to the domain of trade & environment, where only a small portion of the original 2001 Doha Declaration objectives are still on the table. For an up to date in depth analysis of these concerns see the following presentations:

 

 
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CIEL
The CIEL analysis emphasizes the key environmental items of the Doha Development Agenda which are left unresolved, especially the relationship between the WTO agreements and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), which must not be modified at the expense of the MEAs.

 
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CIEL/FoE-US
This analysis looks at the key sustainable development concerns such as trade preferences available to developing countries through the 'enabling clause' of the Generalized System of Preferences, agriculture, investment, Intellectual Property Rights on plant genetic resources, public health and access to medicines, environmental provisions, or the threats to policy space for development posed by Free Trade Agreements.

 

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ICTSD/BioRes
This contribution looks at progress in the negotiations of fisheries subsidies and their threats to overcapacity and overfishing. It sees a significant progress in this area, contrary to other domains such as environmental goods, and threats to biodiversity due to the imposition of Intellectual Property Rights, where negotiations have stalled or have made little progress.

 
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ICTSD/IISD
This is a comprehensive study on trade and sustainable development published right before the Conference. As far as trade & environment is concerned, (pp. 34-37) a particularly valuable feature consists in the discussion of the members' submissions to the CTE in Special Session regarding Environmental Goods, and regarding the relationship between the WTO agreements and MEAs. It includes the submissions' carefully documented codes ("Document symbols"), which make it possible to download them from the WTO's Document Online database. The study also explains the nature of the deadlock regarding the relationship between MEAs and WTO agreements.