WTO to act on ocean fish, food security, COVID vaccines

Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency report

The World Trade Organization (WTO) weekend concluded its meeting attended by over 100 ministers of sovereign nations with a resolve to tackle three global health, environmental and hunger emergencies.

The WTO members also reached a provisional agreement to extend a moratorium on applying duties to electronic transmissions until the next ministerial meeting, likely to be in 2023.

The ministers coordinated and presided over in the meeting by Nigeria’s Dr Ngozi Okojo-Iweala committed their countries to protecting stocks of ocean fish, broadening production of COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world, improving food security and reforming a 27-year-old trade body that has been back on its heels in recent years.

The Oracle Today reports that reaching as many as three critical agreements by the WTO in a three day meeting is significant achievement given that it requires consensus of all 164 member countries and no objection. This requires the rigorous task of breaking the ice between and among countries from disputing economic, military and diplomatic blocs.

At the WTO meetings, mediations formed formidable strategies in getting delegates from disputing countries like Russia and Ukraine to agree; or the ministers of Iran and Israel to support a common viewpoint. Thus sideline meetings and robust consultation through third parties became cortical in at least persuading some delegates from raising objections that would stall a consensus.

And for Dr Okonjo-Iweala and her secretariat staff, breaking diplomatic barriers between delegates become the main task, especially in the prevailing circumstances where Russia has become a pariah state and Western diplomats avoid her delegates more than they avoid monkey pox patients.

Apart from global indignation at the impertinency of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fallouts of the war including famine, oil price jumps and galloping inflation in many economies tend to portray Russia as a global villain.

Director-General, Dr Nzogi Okonjo-Iweala, declared at the end of the ministerial conference that the world is committed to enhanced cooperation in combating threats posed to human life by geopolitical crises rocking diplomatic and trade relationships and leading to wars  like the prevailing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and coordinated Western responses.

She also pointed at the lingering novel coronavirus disease or COVID-19 which has killed millions of people, disrupted global trade and shaken the world economy since 2019; saying that decisions at the meeting are unprecedented package of deliverables.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala who addressed delegates at the end of the conference commended them on reaching agreements and striking deals that would difference to the lives of people around the world. She said the success of the conference indicates the organization’s capability for addressing tough global challenges.

Analysts point at some of the milestone achievement of the agreements to include rekindling of confidence in the organization after allegations by the past administration of the United States’ that the WTO interfered in its trade competition with China.

Lack of confidence from the United States impacted the WTO’s arbitration role in international trade disputes.

Among the main achievements Friday was an accord to prohibit support for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The agreement also prohibited support for fishing in overtaxed stocks in the world’s oceans.

“WTO members have for the first time, concluded an agreement with environmental sustainability at its heart,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “This is also about the livelihoods of the 260 million people who depend directly or indirectly on marine fisheries.”

Despite India and some allies winning concessions that retained some subsidies for small artisanal fishing, Dr Okonjo-Iweala maintained that the deal takes a first step to curb government subsidies and overcapacity in the fishing industry.

The fisheries agreement, which focused on subsidies for types of fishing that are unsustainable or illegal, came with a late addition that will limit its validity to four years unless new rules to fight overcapacity and overfishing are addressed. That was a clause sought by some African, Caribbean and Pacific Island countries.

More controversial was an agreement on a watered-down plan to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, which ran afoul of advocacy groups that say it did not go far enough and could even do more harm than good.

But Okonjo-Iweala said the waiver of intellectual property protections “will contribute to ongoing efforts to concentrate and diversify vaccine manufacturing capacity so that a crisis in one region does not leave others cut off.”

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hailed a “concrete and meaningful outcome to get more safe and effective vaccines to those who need it most.”

Her announcement a year ago that the U.S. would break with many other developed countries with strong pharmaceutical industries to work toward a waiver of WTO rules on COVID-19 vaccines served as an impetus to talks around a broader waiver sought by India and South Africa.

But some advocacy groups were seething. Aid group Doctors Without Borders called it a “devastating global failure for people’s health worldwide” that the agreement stopped short of including other tools to fight COVID-19, including treatments and tests.

“The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful,” said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and head of inequality policy at Oxfam.

He said the European Union, United States, Britain and Switzerland blocked a stronger text.

“This so-called compromise largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances,” Lawson said.

Big pharmaceutical companies weren’t happy that the vaccine waiver was approved, arguing that it sends a negative message to researchers and innovators who developed COVID-19 vaccines with blistering speed.

“The decision is a disservice to the scientists that left no stone unturned and undermines manufacturing partnerships on every continent,” said Thomas Cueni, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.

Goyal, the Indian minister whose tough negotiating stance had frustrated some developed countries, said the ministerial meeting was a “big boost for multilateralism” and showed progress on issues — like fisheries — that have been lagging for decades.

“India is 100% satisfied with the outcome,” he told reporters in Geneva. “I am not returning to India with any worries.”

Ministers also agreed to avoid imposing some export restrictions that have weighed on the U.N.’s World Food Program, which is trying to offset the impact of rising food prices and fallout from the war in Ukraine on shipments of wheat, barely and other food staples from the key producing country.

Meanwhile, the WTO members had earlier agree to extend a moratorium on applying duties to electronic transmissions until the next ministerial meeting in 2023.

The prospect of ending the moratorium, which has exempted data flows from cross-border tariffs since 1998, had raised major concerns among businesses. Backed by major players like the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, they argued that letting it expire would undermine a global recovery already threatened by spiralling prices.

“We agree to maintain the current practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions until MC13 which should ordinarily be held by 31 December 2023,” the agreement showed, referring to the next ministerial conference. It specified that the moratorium would expire in March 2024, should the next conference be postponed.

The provisional deal was reached in a negotiating room of the WTO’s Geneva headquarters between a group of major members and still needs to be backed by the body’s 164 members.

India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Africa had threatened to block an extension earlier in the five-day ministerial conference, where deals are also being sought on fishing, vaccines and food security. It was not immediately clear what might have made them change their minds.