Towards a Socially and Environmentally Responsible Regime of Global Trade and Investment
As stated at the outset: We do not oppose global trade and investment. But we maintain that such trade and investment must be harnessed towards social development and environmental protection goals. Current WTO and other multilateral trade and investment agreements are driven by untested, and so far counterfactual, neoliberal economic theories about the social beneficence of economic growth. They have been enacted at the expense rather than enhancement of other multilateral agreements on social and environmental "common good" goals; and of the abilities of national governments to regulate their internal economies towards such objectives.
We believe fundamentally that issues of trade and investment, and agreements thereon, must not be separated from issues of governance (regulatory and redistributive) for common good social and environmental goals.
The precise means for this integration remains moot: Social clauses? Formal linkages between the WTO and UN agencies overseeing social and environmental agreements? Creation of new multilateral bodies for such agreements with similar, but not necessarily identical, enforcement measures to that of the WTO? Specific requirements for environmental impact and health (social development) inequalities assessments of current and proposed trade and investment agreements? Integration of the WTO into the UN?
We do not wish to preclude any of these options from consideration.
Instead, we believe that how this integration might occur must become the agenda of the Seattle and subsequent WTO Rounds; and that until some resolution to this is created structurally (as distinct from simply declarations of intent) that no new multilateral trade and investment agreements be considered.