Global Forum on Trade, Environment, and Development

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Published January, 2001
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CBI Practitioners: 
David Fairman

 

The Consensus Building Institute (CBI) initiated the Global Forum on Trade, Environment and Development (GFTED) in early 2001 in response to the difficulties experienced by the international community in setting and implementing a negotiating agenda on the evermore-pressing issues lying at the intersection of trade, environment and development.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) took a big step in November 2001 with the declaration of the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar. That declaration provided the mandate for negotiations on a range of environmental concerns, notably on the relationship between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations set out in multilateral environmental agreements, on reductions or elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services, and on fisheries subsidies.

These issues will thus feature prominently on the global agenda in the next few years as several rounds of talks are expected to yield concrete outcomes by the negotiation deadline of January 2005. But just how rocky this road may be was illustrated by the negotiations leading up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in 2002 in Johannesburg: just a couple of weeks away from the beginning of the conference, approximately four fifths of the text pertaining to trade and finance issues in the main negotiated document was yet to be agreed upon. If progress is to be made in this arena, it is thus imperative that space for creative problem solving be made available to a broad range of interested parties. To help meet this need, CBI is actively engaged in testing a new approach to unknotting the tangled set of policy issues at the intersection of trade, environment and development.

 

Project Objectives
GFTED is meant to serve as a forum where senior governmental officials and key actors from civil society from North and South can meet to brainstorm ways of dealing with differences on issues pertaining to the intricate global trade and environment agenda. Based on extensive experience with facilitated multistakeholder dialogue at the global level, we believe we can make a substantial contribution towards strengthening the role played by the “constructive middle” in these policy debates. Among its main goals are:

  • To promote learning and enhance mutual understanding among the broad range of stakeholders who are promulgating, or are affected by, norms and practices relating to the nexus of trade, environment, and development.
  • To generate and disseminate new knowledge on the challenges posed by existing or proposed norms, and on best-practice solutions that are potentially transferable to multiple national and regional contexts, through applied research and case study compilations used as the basis for GFTED face-to-face and on-line consultations.
  • To generate concrete policy proposals (bridging the North-South divide, where such gaps exist) to be fed into official decision-making channels at the World Trade Organization (WTO), regional trade bodies and elsewhere.

 

Project Structure
GFTED meetings are rotated regionally (through Latin America, Asia and Africa) and regional partners are identified to share the research, administrative and facilitation responsibilities for each GFTED workshop. GFTED will thus be uniquely positioned to engage a multitude of voices in its dialogue efforts, illuminate complex challenges using a comparative perspective, facilitate the cross-fertilization of ideas and lend coherence to a host of partially overlapping policy-oriented discussions.

 

Topic Areas
In 2001, the GFTED project staff conducted a global survey to determine which topics would be of greatest importance to a diverse group of stakeholders. The results of the interviews with approximately 80 people were synthesized in a Summary Assessment, which identified key findings in three areas: substantive issues; process issues; and implications for the design and operation of GFTED. The Forum will be proactive in selecting those organizing themes for the 3-day meetings that have the most salience in the ongoing formal negotiations and/or are highlighted as priority areas for governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. An additional consideration in topic selection is how much the development of a particular issue area can benefit from the particular facilitated dialogue format that is the comparative advantage of the GFTED process.

 

Regional Partners
On an operational level, CBI is creating alliances with partner organizations in Latin America, Asia and Africa whose practical experience, research capabilities and facilitation expertise will ensure a balanced GFTED.

 

CBI’s Partner in Latin America
Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano (FFLA), a joint facilitator of the first GFTED meeting in Quito, is a private, nonprofit firm dedicated to supporting sustainable development in Latin America. FFLA promotes the organization and facilitation of multisector political dialogue, conflict management training, casework, and research.

 

For more information on this case, please contact Managing Director David Fairman.