§ Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domerasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will ask the World Trade Organisation to include environmental impact assessments when a conflict may arise between trade rules and sustainable development. [HL3105]
§ Lord WhittyThe Doha Development Agenda, agreed by Ministers at the fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in Doha in November 2001, strongly reaffirmed the WTO's collective commitment to the objective of sustainable development.
The ministerial declaration states: "We are convinced that the aims of upholding and safeguarding an open and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system, and acting for the protection of the environment and the promotion of sustainable development can and must be mutually supportive".
The declaration assigns a new role to the WTO's Committee on Trade and Development and Committee on Trade and Environment to act as forums to identify and debate the developmental and environmental aspects of the negotiations in order to support the objective of having sustainable development considerations appropriately reflected during the course of the new trade round.
The declaration also explicitly supports "the efforts by Members to conduct national environmental assessments of trade policies on a voluntary basis". This reflects the view which is strongly held by the majority of WTO members that environmental or sustainability impact assessments should be entirely voluntary in nature and should be conducted at the national level.
The United Kingdom and the European Union strongly support the use of environmental or sustainability impact assessments as a tool to assist the 76WA development of countries' trade policies with a preference for sustainability impact assessment as this allows the full range of economic, environmental and social impacts to be considered in a balanced way.
The EU is, therefore, undertaking its own sustainability impact assessment (SIA) of the new round. The European Commission has recently awarded a contract to the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester to conduct a detailed and rigorous SIA of the new round. The results of the SIA, when available, will he used by the EU to inform its approach to the negotiations. Regular consultations with civil society on the scope and findings of the SIA will be convened by the European Commission. A dedicated website has been set up to provide easily accessible reports on the progress of the SIA.