Trade ministers have not met for a broad-ranging WTO Ministerial Conference since the launch of the Doha Round in 2001. At the G20 London Summit, governments should call for a full Ministerial Conference in Geneva to be held this year. [1]
A full Ministerial Conference in 2009 is necessary to ensure that trade ministers fulfill their board responsibilities to set the WTO’s strategic direction, provide budgetary oversight, approve work programs, and supply political leadership to address critical economic, political, social, and environmental challenges. Amidst the current global economic crisis, a Ministerial Conference would provide an opportunity for political leaders to build public understanding of the importance of multilateral trade rules and the public credibility of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as their guardian.
At the WTO, the Ministerial Conference is the equivalent to its highest governing body. Trade ministers from the WTO’s full membership are mandated to meet as a board every two years (Article 4.1). The Ministerial Conference is the only formal forum the WTO system currently has for ministerial-level policy discussion and agenda-setting that engages all members.
Over the past decade, however, WTO Ministerial meetings have been dominated by efforts to launch and conclude the Doha Round or bypassed altogether in favor of informal mini-ministerials, usually focused on limited aspects of the negotiations, and sometimes hosted not so informally by the WTO Secretariat. Since the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, the scheduling of the next full Ministerial has been ducked altogether. Some commentators caution that Ministers should only be gathered to seal anal Doha deal, fearing that a broader Ministerial agenda may detract from that effort. But this reasoning is flawed.
The regularity and preductability of ministerial-level meetings are vital to the good governance of any international organization, most of which have boards that meet at least annually. Effective governance demands attention to processes that foster dialogue, accountability and transparency. These processes matter most when tensions are highest. The absence of regularity breeds anxiety about unequal participation in decision-making and creates unhelpful expectations that ministerial meetings must have momentous outcomes.
While responding to the global economic crisis is rightly spurring efforts to bolster multilateral cooperation, close the Doha Round, avert beggarthy-neighbor protectionism and boost access to trade finance, the challenge is to balance crisis management with the long outstanding need to ensure the Doha Round and the multilateral trading system better serve developing countries and advance sustainable development goals. We need improved global trade governance to address long-standing concerns about the quality of growth and work; multiple environmental crises (e.g., concerning fisheries, forests, climate and persistent organic pollutants, among others); and overlapping social crises regarding food security, growing inequality, poverty, and public health, as well as the particular concerns of the poorest developing countries (which are not properly represented in fora such as the G20). The latter include calls for affordable trade finance, protection from volatility in commodity prices, support for national budgets gutted by steep declines in export revenues, greater assistance to implement existing WTO rules, more flexible rules, and improved access to justice through the dispute settlement mechanism.
A Ministerial Conference would provide an opportunity for open dialogue about how national governments can respond to global public concerns and expectations about economic security, environmental sustainability, and social justice.
While WTO Members will not reach consensus on all issues, this does not obviate the need for or value of dialogue, the acknowledgement of divergences, and the search for common-ground.
G20 leaders should commit to working with WTO Members to circulate and consider proposals for a Ministerial Conference agenda that encompasses:
• Concluding an ambitious development-friendly Doha Round (or taking stock if the deal is still not ready);
• Clarifying the strategic vision, direction and mandate of the WTO;
• Discussing the values the multilateral trading system should protect and support;
• Addressing the proliferation of preferential trading schemes;
• Evaluating the WTO’s role in global economic governance and its relationships with other international organizations;
• Reflecting on the performance of the WTO Secretariat;
• Debating institutional reforms to ensure the WTO is fit for purpose.
• Sharing best practices for national trade policymaking; and
Recommendations for WTO reform strangely strike fear in the hearts of many trade analysts. Some reject that reform is necessary, others contend that it is not politically plausible, that the time is not ripe, or that reform proponents should focus first on improving the operation of existing aspects of the WTO. Reform can indeed start by working with what exists, but deeper reforms should also be considered. Those who reject the need for reform risk taking for granted the credibility and relevance of the very system they mean to defend. For those who suggest waiting, the question they should answer is when the right time to address fundamental, systemic challenges will arrive.
To begin, governments should reconsider the most appropriate decision-making processes for the distinct functions the WTO system serves (e.g., negotiation, capacity-building, problem-solving, monitoring, research and information-exchange, and dispute settlement). Each function may demand different roles for the WTO Secretariat, its Director-General, coalitions of WTO Members, and non-state stakeholders, whether from business, academia, or civil society. Calls to expand the WTO Secretariat should be approached cautiously; governments should carefully identify which particular aspects of the WTO’s functions warrant the investment of greater resources in the Secretariat over other multilateral organizations or actors at the regional and national level.
Top WTO reform priorities that governments should discuss at a Ministerial Conference include:[2]
- Mechanisms for boosting the effective participation of developing countries and their coalitions in negotiations and other aspects of decision-making. There are lessons to be learned about the internal management of coalitions and their accountability to members. Least developed and small countries should be supported to maintain permanent representation to the WTO in Geneva.
- Increase support for research and analysis to benefit developing countries. The emphasis should not be on building capacity in the WTO Secretariat, but rather on enhancing independent trade policy research and analytical capacity in universities, think tanks, and research centers in developing countries at the national and/or regional level.
- Improve the WTO’s monitoring function and the transparency of national trade policy measures.
Governments could start by fulfilling their existing notification requirements and by agreeing to publicize the Trade Policy Review (TPR) process, invite recognized international experts as commentators in TPR meetings in Geneva, invite input and commentaries from other national and international interested parties (e.g., other IGOs, industry groups, NGOs, academics), and involve national stakeholders in the preparation of TPR reports and assessment of particular concerns related to gender, labor, environment, etc.
WTO Members should also integrate a new component into the Trade Policy Review process for least developed countries (LDCs) that evaluates the fulfilment by developed countries of their capacity-building commitments to them.
Shift support from bilateral trade-capacity building to multilateral initiatives that offer great, opportunities to delink assistance from donor’s mercantilist priorities. Developing countries must push for more effective aid; better articulate national needs, and extract more value from existing resources. Third-party monitoring and evaluation of donor performance should be boosted (e.g., through annual independent evaluations and/ or peer-reviews of trade-related capacity building from the recipient’s perspective).
Establish mechanisms for assessment of the impacts of WTO rules. Governments should agree to use existing sustainable development principles and benchmarks as yardsticks against which to measure how the system is delivering on the goals the international community has set for itself (such as the UN Millennium Development Goals and targets set at the World Summit on Sustainable Development). The scope of the WTO’s Trade Policy Review process could be expanded to serve as a tool to help governments integrate sustainable development considerations into trade decision-making. Greater use could also be made of the ‘good offices’ of the Director General to ‘problem-solve’ specific trade-policy tensions that arise. In addition, the creation of an Ombudsman Office to which third parties could submit specific sustainable development concerns for the attention of member states could be considered. To further aid in this assessment role, governments could consider selectively opening up the work of some of their non-negotiation, Committee-based work to experts and interested parties to facilitate informed debate about trends and trade policy options.
G20 leaders should set an example by reporting on efforts to improve their own internal coordination of national trade policy making processes to incorporate sustainable development considerations, and to engage a broader range of domestic political actors – beyond trade technocrats – such as parliamentarians the private sector, trade unions, and civil society. Governments should also commit to including relevant stakeholders in their delegations to WTO negotiations and to move active dialogue among parliamentarians from across the WTO’s membership, including through the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Dr. Carolyn Deere Birkbeck is Director of the Global Trade Governance Project at the Global Economic Governance Programme, University College, Oxford. She is the author of The Implementation Game: The TRIPS Agreement and the Politics of Intellectual Property Reform in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, 2008) and co-editor (with Daniel Esty) of Greening the Americas: NAFTA’s Lessons for Hemispheric Trade (MIT Press, 2002).
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[1] A version of this argument was made in the GEG blog in January 2009, and was republished with the title ‘WTO Leadership Challenges in 2009′ in English, Spanish and Portuguese in BRIDGES Monthly, PUENTES and PONTES – all of which are published by ICTSD and available at http:// www.ictsd.ch.
[2] These proposals are elaborated in greater depth in Deere, Carolyn (2009) Making Global Trade Governance for Developing Countries: Proposals for WTO Reform, Global Economic Governance Programme Working Paper, University College, Oxford.
[...] Ministerial Conference should not, however, be downplayed as mere ‘housekeeping’. As I argued on this blog in April, this year’s Ministerial Conference is a critical opportunity for dialogue on the systemic [...]