simon zadek

“We have an Accord that has some of the elements of a legally binding agreement that we need”, opined Achim Steiner from UNEP, “do not under-estimate what we have achieved. And on the trade regime, another year gone and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars investment and income generating on hold and at risk”.

Saturday afternoon, exhaustion showing on peoples’ faces, but an almost full room of folks ponder on the topic of trade and climate. “”it is about competition”, says Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, “will a climate deal lead us to be penanalised in an approach that we are not fully engaged in, that is, protectionism”. Pascal Lamy, doyen DG at the WTO, reflects with typical cautious flair, “I am mostly concerned with open trade, but i have a duty to care about the environment, i have an order of priorities, which we need to respect…Copenhagen is a step forward”  …”there is the potential of a multilateral framework that may work”, he adds making an art out of optimistic conditional statements, or perhaps conditional optimism. Madame Leuthard, Swiss President, “climate arrangements could be trade distorting…we have considered but failed to define ‘environmentally friendly products’, so we cannot factor this into trade arrangements, and does this discriminate against nations that cannot afford clean technologies, as claimed by the Indians and others”.

“A large part of this planet is underdeveloped”, argues Anil Sharma, “lets not kid ourselves, the discourse needs to be very honest, you cannot separate us from history, the situation has been brought about my unsustainable production and consumption. this is not a blame game, its just true. The entire agreement on carbon credits is unethical, ‘i have enough to pay you for my past sins rather than solving them’, Copenhagen has come out with a disappointing soft landing…so what shall we do where people die of hunger, what shall we tell them, your wealth was based on our resources, resources and technology have to be made available to poorer countries free…nations like India are in a position to be partners, but we have to be agreed on the goal that the poor nations will be supported freely…we can talk and talk, but will we address it honestly…on trade, we are committed to a fair regime that honestly corrects historical distortions, that is why Doha must come to a correct conclusion”.

“Trade might contribute to climate, it is not always damaging because of transport”, intervenes Lamy offering a technocratic anecdote to the preceding comments…”the Montreal Protocol on CFCs shows how it can be done, it did not create problems with trade…we have to try to reach the same point with climate”.

Polite, informed, and profoundly disfunctional.

Leuthard: “overcoming subsidies must be part of the solution, even although it would be hard, just as we have to consider ways to benefit environmentally friendly goods”.

Rachid: “to use trade to manage climate we need to resolve existing distortions first, which is what lies at the heart of the current negotiations…we have to accept the need for rational carbon border adjustments, to agree on environmental goods and services, and we have to agree on the issue of transport”.

Sharma: “the fundamental issue is about people, are those made poor in the past going to be held in poverty for ever…when you have one billion people denied food security, what do we say about biofuels…do we want to feed SUVs or people”.

Lamy: “We have an agreement that allows for protection of the environment, this is not protectionism…when is protection protectionism, that is what we have a mechanism for resolving such things”.

Steiner: “30 years from now there will be two powerful ministries in each government, one will be about financial capital, and the other dealing with natural capital…we are in a race against time and not progressing because of history…in change people get hurt and we need to deal with this…the current technology diffusion model is not credible, we have to focus on the economy, the low carbon economy…our debate is too abstract, too protective”.

Lamy: “can we join the two negotiations…there is no real trade off between these issues, more within these issues…there is a legal bridge, so we can connect already…that they are stuck is about domestic vested interests in both cases…so my simple answer is no”.