Les liaisons fructueuses - RUIG-GIAN

V – Eclairages | Témoignage
The project consisted in an interdisciplinary scientific
investigation by two lawyers and a political
scientist in an issue area that is largely dominated
by intergovernmental organisations and by the
Geneva-based Permanent Missions. It is important
to note here that some specialised NGOs 3 also play
an informative and communicative role between
these actors which is very important given the often
technical, complex and voluminous subject matter.
Furthermore, it is crucial to realize that the Internet-based
official or analytical documentation 4 in
this field provided by organisations like the WTO,
UNEP, the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) and a number of others
is extremely vast and goes well beyond the quantity
of material that can be digested by a small group of
researchers in a year. This is where the critical value of
direct contacts with the experts in the intergovernmental
organisations and missions becomes evident : they
are able to point out specifically which portions of a text
– sometimes it is just part of a paragraph – have either
prevented a consensus or alternatively have provided a
diplomatic solution in a tense situation. In addition
to this, these experts can explain the specific or the
wider context which often needs to be understood
in order to gain insight into the ramifications and
the real meaning of a given part of the official documentation,
not to mention the often very diverse
positions of the Members and Parties of organisations
and agreements.
It was interesting also to make the distinction between
the two kinds of Permanent Missions located
in Geneva : those dealing with the UN organisations,
and those dealing with the WTO. Some countries
have separate Missions, others have a joint Mission.
Either way, in most cases the two areas of business
are distinctly separate since they relate to different
Ministries with usually less than perfect communications
and coordination among themselves. As a
matter of fact, during the first part of the project
the three researchers concentrated entirely on the
WTO negotiations regarding so-called Environmental
Goods under the mandate of the Doha Development
Agenda, 5 which means that in the case
of the Missions we were dealing exclusively with
the WTO-related ones. Here we found a clear contrast
between the Missions : most of the developing
countries strongly supported in these negotiations
on tariff reductions the consideration of technology
transfer-related aspects and of relatively comprehensive
projects and categories. The Missions of the industrialized
countries on the other hand were more
intent on reducing obstacles to trade liberalization
by emphasizing the role of the market and the protection
of intellectual property rights, and they primarily
focused on the definition of Environmental
Goods and on the compilation of lists.
In the second half of the project the three researchers
focused each on a more specialized mandate.
One of them organized an original informal exchange
with trade negotiators at the WTO which
led to an up-to-date analysis of the state of play of
the Environmental Goods negotiations. The other
two concentrated on certain trade-related MEAs,
i.e. Climate Change, and hazardous wastes and
chemicals, and they focused more on the Secretariats
of the relevant MEAs. The latter led to a
roundtable whose participants were mostly experts
from these Secretariats. This event resulted in a
very rare exchange with a somewhat broader interested
public on wastes and chemicals issues which
are normally discussed only among specialists. On
the whole we can conclude that our research methodology
turned out to be very fruitful and rewarding ;
the researchers were welcomed in the international
organisations and their staff in turn very much appreciated
the opportunity to discuss their work with
academic researchers, an opportunity which they don’t
usually have.
Some Diplomatic Reflections 6
Alexander Graham Bell said that : “Great discoveries
and improvements invariably involve the co-operation
of many minds”. Nowhere is this truer in international
negotiations than when trade negotiators
and other types of diplomats come together to tackle
one of the biggest challenges of our generation : how
to bring about greater market openness and prosperi-
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3. The most important ones for our project were the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and
the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
4. Including studies, background papers, and reviews etc. of an informative nature which do not necessarily reflect the positions of any specific government.
5. Doha Declaration, Para. 31.(iii) http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/dda_e.htm
6. This section was prepared by Alan Searl of the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva.