Environmentalists Plan to Challenge WTO

November 4, 1999

When the World Trade Organization meets in Seattle, WA, late this month, environmentalists will be on hand, demonstrating against WTO policies on chemicals and food additives as well as food safety and labeling.

One priority of the demonstrators, says Worldwatch Institute, is to incorporate into WTO rules "a greater respect for the precautionary principle." That principle holds that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, any lack of scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to postpone action.

"The WTO's provisions shift the burden of proof, in effect requiring that chemicals and food additives be proven harmful before their use can be restricted," writes Hilary French in an article in the November-December issue of WORLD WATCH magazine.

"If the economy's environmental support systems are to be protected," she continues, "several other steps are also required. Among these are protecting consumer's right to know about the health and environmental impact of products they purchase by safeguarding eco-labeling programs from trade challenges; deferring to international environmental treaties in cases where they conflict with WTO rules; ensuring the right of countries to use trade measures to protect the global environmental commons, and opening the WTO to meaningful public participation."

Those changes "are imperative" if the WTO hopes to have the public support it needs "to say in business," says French.

Most mainstream U.S. agricultural groups have been highly critical of the precautionary principle. The Clinton Administration has also opposed efforts to enshrine it in international trade law, reasoning that the principle's vagueness makes it well-suited for protectionism. Historically, trade law has based import restrictions on relatively objective standards that can be measured, such as the price of a product or whether it is sold below production cost. The precautionary principle, in the view of many U.S. farm groups, would let the European Union (its main advocate among trading nations) keep out American products on a whim.