Green trade talks go nowhere in Indonesia
December 10th, 2007
CTV.ca News Staff
Rich and poor countries have failed to agree on a plan to reduce trade barriers on green goods such as wind turbines and solar panels.
“What there’s no agreement on is the U.S.-EU proposal,” Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim, Brazil’s foreign affairs minister, told reporters in Jimbaran, Indonesia on Sunday following two days of informal talks involving 32 countries.
“I think this list is incomplete. It won’t do much for climate change. It’s not proven what the effect it will have on climate change, maybe a little bit here and there.”
Brazil wanted the U.S.-EU list of 43 products to include biofuels. Brazil is the world’s top ethanol producer.
“The U.S. is a net importer (of these 43 goods). What’s complicated about ethanol is it shows up in agricultural negotiations. Part of the confusion is where it shows up technically,” U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters.
She claimed developing countries like China, Mexico, Malaysia and Indonesia were all major exporters of the goods on the list.
Pascal Lamy, cheif of the World Trade Organization, said developing countries are leaders in clean technologies. Freer trade in those goods would help them.
He suggested some trade rules could be tweaked to curb greenhouse gas output.
The trade ministers did call for the Doha development agenda negotiations, which would include trade in environmental goods.
The talks were in addition to the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Bali, Indonesia to start the process of negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.
Kyoto called for 38 industrialized countries to cut their emissions by an average of five per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Source: http://www.ctv.ca/
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