Trading to save the environment
There are no winners in a contest between people and the environment. Recognising this, officials and experts in the fields of environment and trade met at the ASEAN Workshop on Trade and Environment to find the sustainable path between preserving the ecological balance in ASEAN and maintaining or improving the current rate of development.
Since some natural resources are common and do not respect national boundaries or those of government departments, there has been an increasing need for regional policies to address the impact of current trading practices and development policies. Other related issues include the impact of international regulations on the trade and development of the region. With the tropics as the new frontier for development it is timely that ASEAN play a lead role in the international arena. This would augur well for both ASEAN's ecology and economy. ASEAN policy recommendations generally fall into two categories: (i) the establishment of a coordinated ASEAN position vis a vis external developments; and (ii) the coordination of national policies among ASEAN countries.
The workshop held in Bali, Indonesia in August 1996, sought to provide guidelines for developing and coordinating policies at the ASEAN level. The findings of activities held under the ASEAN Sub-programme on Trade and Environment initiated in 1994 and funded by the UNDP, formed the bulk of the issues discussed. The recommendations of a series of four national level workshops held in April 1996 to finalise the national level studies, and a quantitative study of ASEAN trade subject to environmental measures by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for ASEAN were also tabled.
The challenge presented was that of striking a balance between protection and skillful sustainable use of the region's natural resources. This requires an appreciation of the not merely the region's ecology but also an understanding of the regions' human-social problems, such as poverty, unemployment, and the need to ease debt servicing. Thus, fulfilling the needs of the people have to be reconciled with respect for the natural world. The work-shop decided that it was necessary to integrate and institutionalise the coordination of trade and environment-al policy-making. To do this regular joint meetings of trade and environment officials at the national and ASEAN levels should be established.
Conservation demands that economic planners re-think their plans, re-engineer much of the existing infrastructure or utilise the new clean technology as part of the country's development strategy. None of the three, however, can be done without incurring considerable costs. Indeed, the push for nascent economies to adopt clean technology from the start is often construed as the veiled attempts of developed countries to increase production costs in the developing world. The workshop agreed, however, that ASEAN should consider developing a region-wide database and centre for promoting environmentally sustainable technology. Furthermore, ASEAN will coordinate policies to take into account environmental protection and sustainable development costs in the natural resource sectors (e.g. aquaculture and logging).
The workshop agreed that with regard to the relationship of trade measures in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations, ASEAN supported a multi-year waiver approach. It decided that ASEAN should also support efforts to develop guidelines to ensure consistency of trade-related measures in MEAs with WTO provisions, when such measures are necessary. WTO would also be the preferred forum for dispute settlement.
It was also agreed that transborder, regional, or global environmental problems should be resolved through international consensus and MEAs. Furthermore, multilateral trade-related environmental measures were preferred to unilateral measures.
To prevent voluntary environmental measures from becoming barriers to trade and to enhance their mutual recognition and equivalency, the work-shop supported greater transparency and non-discrimination of ecolabeling schemes. To strengthen domestic environmental management, the workshop urged that the polluter pays principle (PPP) be more widely adopted as this would help solve environmental problems at their source. The workshop also resolved to study the experiences of countries which have implemented this principle and collate relevant information on the subject.
Since the Basel Convention unduly discouraged legitimate recycling activities the workshop favoured a comprehensive review of the criteria for listing Toxic and Hazardous Wastes (THW) and the rules for their shipment. In addition, the workshop agreed that ASEAN should coordinate a regional hazardous waste disposal system, and develop a region-wide system for monitoring and eliminating illegal wastes imported to the region. This could include activities such as the exchange of information on the list of toxic and hazardous wastes (THWs), control procedures for their movement and training programmes and capacity building on the management of THWs. National legislation to control the management of THWs within the country is also required.
Emerging issues such as the environment and trade in services, the environmental implications of the Trade-related Intellectual Property (TRIPs) agreement and its impact on the Convention on Biological Diversity were discussed. Environmental taxes on inputs to products that are traded, and the possibility of border adjustments for such taxes were other concerns.
The Workshop acknowledged that ASEAN should look into the increasing pressure on WTO to discuss an international agreement on foreign investment which would have substantial environmental implications. Another area that bears looking into is the current trend to use trade measures to control global warming as this would have significant effects on ASEAN trade and competitiveness. These issues would be best addressed with a work programme, the workshop concluded.