SIA in the Trade Negociation Process

A Challenge for Research and Development

Laurence Tubiana

Sustra Network&

IDDRI, Institut du développement

durable et des relations internationales

Trade negociations in WTO

• Contradictions in the process

• Specialization / extension of domains Trip’s, Investments, Services …

• Single undertaking

• Far reaching consequences, uncertainty

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Growing questions and discontent

• Challenging legitimacy of the negotiation process

• Challenging the final economic efficiency of specific measures

• Contest of the equity : priorities and final outcomes

• What are the ends of liberalization ?

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Sustainable development as the common objective of liberalization

• SD : an arbitrage between sometimes competing objectives

• Need to recognize pluralism and diversity in choices

• SIA : an attempt to internalize SD in trade negociation

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Why SIA in trade debate ?

Growing recognition of :

• Interactions environmental & social issues / trade

• Uncertainty

• Unbalanced international institutionnal architecture

Need to integrate SD objectives in trade

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

SIA : policy tool or policy process• SIA as a policy tool : evaluation of policies and

measures • Problem of criterias determination• SIA as a policy process• Shared diagnosis• Common identification of issues• Learning process• Depending of nature and quality of participation

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Perspectives : how to go forward in the liberalization process

• Need to recognize diversity of development models and collective preferences as a precondition of any sustainable liberalization

• SD : building legitimate institutions and preserving specificities

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Common objectives

• Different collective preferences but commons objectives : common goods and fundamental human rights

• MDG’s and Johannesbourg objectives: access to water, energy food security, health and education, protection of biodiversity

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Challenge for research

• From impact assesment of policies to assessment of collectives preferences

• Research on scenarios and alternatives

• Study of the interactions of different development models

• Measure of positive and negative externalities of national and regional collective preferences

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Challenge for research

• New interdisciplinary programs to identify new economic tools

• To analyse legitimacy of collective preferences

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003

Changing negociation methods

• SIA as a permanent reassessment process of trade agreements

• Agreement on medicines as a model for the future: negotiating trade policies in a development perspective

• From a coodination through rule making towards a coordination through objectives for coherent global policies

Sustainable Trade Day, Cancun, 9 September 2003