AUTHOR: Pierre Leturcq

The World Trade Organisation’s Thirteenth Ministerial Conference (MC13) took place in Abu Dhabi (UAE) between 25 February and 1 March 2024. It concluded on the much-expected – but nonetheless disappointing – failure of Members to agree on any key agreements on the agenda. More worrying, Members did not manage to decide on any precise action plan for reforming the organisation’s dispute settlement system, and the MC13 even saw certain Members frontally opposing discussing issues related to climate change and environmental protection, asserting they do not belong within the scope of the WTO’s mandate.

This policy brief reviews the main lessons and outcomes of MC13 and reflects on the positive prospects for progress on issues at the nexus of trade and the environment at the WTO level. The agreement achieved at MC12 to curb harmful fisheries subsidies and the WTO’s presence at COP28 in the framework of the first “Trade Day” and “Trade Pavilion” in an International Climate conference have fueled increased interest and enthusiasm towards the WTO’s activities within the environmental community since 2022. At the forefront of discussions in Abu Dhabi were diverse topics with varying trajectories. While some, such as agricultural subsidies, were anticipated not to yield any concrete outcomes, others, such as the continuation of the WTO’s pivotal agreement on fisheries subsidies (Focus 1) or the plurilateral agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development (Focus 2), held promising potential for swift adoption.

Momentum has surged around these issues, with expectations soaring before and during the conference. However, even after an additional day of negotiation, none of these texts reached the finish line in Abu Dhabi. The EU’s negotiating mandate pragmatically insisted on developing the deliberative function of the WTO and referred to new issues such as industrial policy, two aspects that were eventually not taken up in the Declaration. Even the highly scrutinised “sustainable development-related paragraph” (Focus 3) in the Ministerial Declaration ended up referring to a vague notion of “global challenges”, marking a step backwards from previous declarations. 

The agreement achieved at MC12 to curb harmful fisheries subsidies and the WTO’s presence at COP28 in the framework of the first “Trade Day” and “Trade Pavilion” in an International Climate conference have fueled increased interest and enthusiasm towards the WTO’s activities within the environmental community since 2022. At the forefront of discussions in Abu Dhabi were diverse topics with varying trajectories. While some, such as agricultural subsidies, were anticipated not to yield any concrete outcomes, others, such as the continuation of the WTO’s pivotal agreement on fisheries subsidies (Focus 1) or the plurilateral agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development (Focus 2), held promising potential for swift adoption.

Some voices have started to speculate and assume that if MC13 had occurred two months later (meaning after the Indian election), the outcomes would have been different. Yet, our take is that we simply cannot afford to wait every two years to see no progress being made. To escape from national politics contingencies, more emphasis should be placed on the daily work of the WTO committees. The question also relates to the Fisheries Agreement and other environment-related files regarding how best to move them over the line as quickly as possible in Geneva. Especially:

• The plurilateral dialogue on plastic pollution
• The Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions,
• The forum on technical standards for decarbonisation.
• The advancement of regulatory cooperation through the discussions on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) in the framework of committee work

The brief tries to look at the glass half full, and provides more details on all these topics.