Trade news

EU trade policy
WTO
The EU's position
Sustainability Impact Assessments
Factfile
Publications

Home

The WTO's remit is to encourage and regulate trade around the globe. In recent years it has reduced tariffs paid by countries importing forest products to negligible levels (on average 1.1% for industrialised countries, and 1.7% for countries in the South) to increase trade in this sector. This trend, known as ‘tariff liberalisation’, is reflected in many areas of WTO policy, and has helped create a huge market for cheap wood products.

Perhaps more importantly, the WTO is pushing for liberalisation in trade beyond tariff agreements. Non-tariff measures (NTMs), government procurement, intellectual property rights and investment have all been subject to trade liberalisation. However, the WTO and its members have ignored the potential adverse effects of trade liberalisation on forest ecosystems and forest communities. They have failed to assess the environmental and social impacts of trade liberalisation in the forest sector and in other sectors that affect forests and forest peoples. They have also failed to adequately involve civil society in timber trade and other liberalisation discussions.

The European Commission has the power to negotiate trade deals on behalf of EU Member States. The EU is a major consumer and importer of timber and timber products and is also one of the main actors within the World Trade Organisation. Having benefited from the current trade system, the EU is now calling for a new trade round that could accelerate trade liberalisation even more.

The objectives of Fern's work on the WTO are:

• Forests should not be treated simply as industrial products but recognized as as complex ecosystems with a broad spectrum of commercial and non-commercial values
• WTO support for and encouragement of environmental and social non-tariff measures. The WTO needs to reject the proposal that such NTMs are technical barriers to trade.
• Wider use of Sustainability Impact Assessments, and more stringent environmental and social criteria, for WTO agreements
• More participation of NGOs and civil society in European Commission positioning on WTO issues.

Fern's report Trade liberalisation and its impact on forests (November 2000, PDF, 426k) provides more detailed information on liberalisation, NTMs and Sustainablitity Impact Assessments.