Statement by Mark Van Putten
President and CEO
National Wildlife Federation

By postponing their negotiations, trade ministers from around the world meeting in Seattle conceded that fundamental WTO reforms are necessary before proceeding with any further trade liberalizations talks.

For over a year, the National Wildlife Federation has identified basic environmental reforms that must be made to establish public confidence in the international trade system and allow trade liberalization to continue.

While the Seattle Ministerial failed to achieve the reforms needed to reconcile trade rules with environmental concerns, the future is on our side. You can't turn back the clock.

The reforms advocated by the National Wildlife Federation include:

*The WTO must adopt modern democratic standards of openness;

*The WTO must recognize legitimate national environmental standards;

*The WTO must defer to international environmental agreements and the international bodies created to implement them;

*New trade agreements must include environmental assessments;

*Individuals and nations must be able to take into account the environmental effects of how imports are produced; and

*The WTO must eliminate subsidies for harmful practices depleting the world's fisheries and must avoid hasty reduction of tariffs on forest products that would further damage some of world's most vulnerable ecosystems.


Although we are disappointed these reforms were not achieved in Seattle, we are confident of future success. This Ministerial meeting has demonstrated that public confidence cannot be established and trade liberalization cannot proceed without fundamental environmental reforms.

The era of international trade negotiations being insulated from public concerns, including respect for the environment, is over.

The National Wildlife Federation will continue to advocate these reforms internationally and with the U.S. Administration and Congress.

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