On Feb. 7, Yale Law School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Professor Dan Esty shared his impressions of the failed World Trade Organization talks with Fletcher students. Esty had attended the negotiations as both an advisor to the U.S. delegation and director of the Yale Program on Global Environment Trade.  His lecture at Fletcher was part of the Charles Francis Adams lecture series.

The scholar opened with anecdotes from the Seattle talks and acknowledged that initially, he had admired the protestors as "voices left out of the process that needed to be heard," and an example of U.S.-style freedom of speech.  However, as the day progressed, the physical blockade and riot police fighting the protestors with tear gas led to a "striking display of violence in the streets, of chaos and confusion, of where the world might be going," Esty said.  Finally, with the streets empty, curfew in place, and police in full riot gear, Esty said he wondered, "What country is this?"

Seattle marks a watershed after which trade negotiations will not be controlled by "the Quad" (U.S., Japan, Europe and Canada), nor will negotiations take place in dark rooms "operating under the radar," according to Esty.  Seattle also demonstrated that economic integration would require some political integration, he added.  Esty surmised that although the world is moving to a rule-based mechanism for managing interdependence, it has not yet developed the shared values and sense of community necessary for success.

The rising number of items on the WTO Trade and Environment Agenda demonstrates that it is economically "inefficient not to take the environment on board," Esty argued.  In the political economic context, "you cannot assemble a winning coalition if environment lines up against trade," he added.

According to Esty, the laundry list of things that went wrong in Seattle included: a series of trade disputes on which parties were not willing to compromise such as those dealing with agricultural subsidies; a failure to include civil society/NGOs in the talks; an agenda that was loose rather than structured; a failure to fully comprehend the roles of labor, environment and human rights in trade; uncertainty regarding who will benefit from a reformed trade regime; and fears of Americanization of the world economy.

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Dan Esty’s Recommendations for the World Trade Organization:

1) Concentrating on win-win opportunities such as reducing energy, timber, water and agricultural subsidies to improve trade flows and reduce environmental problems;
Implementing a transparent WTO agenda and a rule-based system accompanied by environmental review and sensitivity issues;

2) Supra-liberalizing environmental goods and services to allow all to share in technology;

3) Applying WTO jurisprudence to help weak and small countries; without the involvement of the WTO, the larger developed countries and their multinational corporations will dominate.