APPENDIX 1
Memorandum submitted by Mr Anthony Jackson
Once again I wish to complement you on this
present inquiry.
Please find below some comments on this second
stage:
The WTO only considers trade, and any consideration
of the environment is not in its mandate. Hence its decisions
do, and will continue to lead to environmental degradation.
Reform has to come in terms of the WTO accepting
equality with international environmental treaties such as the
Convention on Biological Diversity, the Cartegena Protocol, the
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and the Kyoto
Protocol. It could even be argued that these treaties should have
supremacy over the WTO.
There are also strong and valid arguments to
remove agriculture from the WTO completely. Only a small proportion
of agricultural produce is traded internationally, and we must
never forget that agriculture's fundamental purpose is to feed
people.
TRIPs is one of the greatest travesties of modern
times. Effectively a new global enclosures.
The World Bank and the IMF are basically run
by and for Washington/Wall Street insiders, and pursue policies
accordingly. If they are to remain in existence, there is an immediate
need for a fundamental reform of staff and philosophy. Developing
countries need a much larger say in both organisations, and the
economic doctrines followed must incorporate environmental and
social pricing, and costs.
Multinational Corporations, especially in this
context, in agriculture, have far too much of a say in Washington,
the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and undoubtedly Whitehall too.
It is their interests that are pursued, not those of our environment,
or of the poor. GM crops are just one, fine, example.
The patenting of life forms and genetic resources,
is quite simply an act of theft of the world's resources, and
the historical achievements of mankind, purely for the benefit
of the most powerful "Corporations".
For the environment to be protected, and the
poor to be able to set their own agendas for development, it is
they who need to be able to have full access to their own resources,
and be able to add value as they see fit, and engage in fair and
equitable trade with equal partners.
Vested interests and corruption, wherever found,
need to be swept aside rapidly if we are not just to continue
paying lip service to these issues, but instead effectively address
the fundamentals and make real progress.
If we do not learn to share the world's resources
in a far more fair and equitable way, we will spend the next century
fighting each other for them.
| 
