Environment linked with multilateral trading system: Lamy

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NEW DELHI, Oct 28 (PTI): At a time when India is faced with a "false" Non-Governmental Organisation campaign on child labour and human rights violation by its industry, WTO chief Pascal Lamy has said environment is linked with the multilateral trading system which must play a "bigger role" as required in the Doha round.
"There is no doubt in my mind that for the WTO to accomplish bigger things on the environment, it must first complete the first ever environmental negotiating agenda that has been placed before it," Lamy said in his address at the Yale University in the US
Lamy reminded the global trade negotiators that the Doha Round was the first ever round of negotiations to include an 'environmental or green chapter'. It was also the "first ever round of negotiations to encourage members to conduct environmental reviews at the national level," he said.
India and many other developing countries have maintained that issues like environment and labour standards should not be linked with the global trade since these norms could well be used as "non-trade barriers" by the developed countries, particularly the EU where the 'green movement' is quite strong.
Even economists of the repute of Colombia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati have been expressing their staunch opposition to establishing relationship between trade and environment.
Lamy also quoted Bhagwati as saying, "If a nation's trading rights can be suspended simply because it refuses to accept another nation's idiosyncratic values, everyone could insist on 'morality-driven' trade restrictions, and the whole international trading system would head down a slippery slope."
The WTO Director General said in the Doha Round, members were mandated to "explore the relationship between WTO rules and such treaties (environment), with a view to ensuring their mutual supportiveness".
India's Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has recently attacked Europe-based NGOs working in Bangalore and spreading "false" campaign against the Indian textile and shoe units, which are outsourcing to global retail stores.
Nath has also written to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson asking for intervention since many of the NGOs are subsidised and financed by the European Commission.