O
Diretor-Geral da Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), Pascal Lamy, afirma que
o multilateralismo está em “uma encruzilhada”. Para ele, ou o multilateralismo “avança
baseando-se em valores comuns e maior cooperação, ou assistiremos seu retrocesso” e, nesse último
caso, todos sairão perdendo.
Lamy crítica os acordos em que as autoridades governamentais
estão protelando tomadas de decisão, como no caso do G-20 e da própria Rio+20, optando por tratativas
menos ousadas, deixando para o futuro um possível consenso em todas as áreas
que estão relacionadas a economia internacional: finanças, comércio, meio
ambiente, cooperação, etc.
Abaixo segue
o discurso feito hoje, 26 de junho de 2012, pelo Diretor Geral da OMC na Humboldt-Viadrina
School of Governance em Berlim.
“It is a great pleasure to be at
the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance to address a question that is
central to the management of interdependence in today’s world — is
multilateralism in crisis?
This is a valid question for
environmental and sustainability matters, as we have seen in the recent Rio+20
Summit. It is true for trade and other economic issues. The G20 Summit in Los
Cabos, Mexico, focused precisely on improving our collective response to the current
economic turbulences. It is also among the central questions at the heart of
developments in the European Union.
I am sure that today’s discussion
will provide interesting insights for our own deliberations later this year.
Before turning my attention to
the specific challenges facing multilateralism in today’s international
architecture, let me first briefly set out the economic environment in which we
are operating.
More than three years have passed
since the beginning of the 2008-09 crisis and the world economy remains very
fragile. World growth remains below its potential. WTO projections indicate
that trade growth will further decelerate this year to 3.7 per cent, down from
5 per cent in 2011. Moreover, WTO economists believe that downside risks to an
even sharper slowdown in trade growth remain high. Unemployment remains
unacceptably high in many of our societies. Many of the achievements in poverty
reduction over the past decade run the risk of unravelling.
And the impact of the crisis is
being felt not just in developed countries but also in the developing world.
The contribution of trade to growth in emerging and developing countries is
decreasing. China’s dynamic economy is expected to grow more slowly in 2012.
India’s growth is decelerating. Many poor countries are seeing their exports to
major markets such as the EU and the US slow down.
This sluggish pace of recovery
raises concerns that a steady trickle of restrictive trade measures could
gradually undermine the benefits of trade openness. Although the WTO has so far
deterred large-scale economic nationalism, we have to redouble vigilance on
this front. History tells us that protectionist pressures will linger as long
as unemployment rates remain unacceptably high. Recent history also tells us
that protectionism does not protect. Given that one country’s exports are
another country’ imports, such behaviour is only likely to lead to a downward
spiral for all — losers and no-winners.
While the crisis continues to
loom, the world has not remained static. New economic players and new patterns
of trade have emerged, dramatically changing the nature of trade and larger
economic inter-dependence. The map of world greenhouse gases emissions has
significantly changed. The internationalization of production processes has led
to increased dependency.
In the past decade, the share of
developing and emerging economies has risen from one-third to half of global
GDP. The value of South-South trade has increased from about one-tenth of total
trade to some two-fifths. Developing countries’ share of global exports has
jumped from 33 per cent to 43 per cent over the last decade, with China’s
exports growing annually at a staggering 20 per cent. A similar picture of
shifting composition arises with respect to foreign direct investment. While
global FDI inflows have stagnated over the last decade, emerging and developing
countries’ share has risen from around 20 per cent to over 50 per cent.
Global trade patterns are also
changing rapidly and dramatically. Not too long ago, goods were referred to as
“made in China” or “made in Germany”. Today, the expansion of global value
chains means that most products are assembled with inputs from many countries.
In other words, today’s goods are “made in the world”. At a growth rate of 6
per cent a year, trade in intermediate goods now comprises close to 60 per cent
of total trade in goods and has become the most dynamic sector in international
trade. Importantly, this trade takes place in high-technology sectors which generate
well-paying jobs.
It is clear that this expansion
of global value chains is impacting trade policies and politics and requires a
new trade narrative. If a significant share of trade involves intermediate
goods, it becomes even more important for countries to keep markets open.
An important consequence of the
integration of production networks is that imports matter as much as exports
and both contribute to job creation and to growth. Value addition along global
production chains requires taking a fresher look at the way we measure trade.
It also requires reflection about the value of interpreting, as has been done
traditionally, bilateral trade balances which in this new pattern become much
less relevant, at least for policy and action.
The map of global greenhouse gas
emissions has also changed and today it does not look a single bit the way it
did yesterday. Emissions of the developing world are rising fast, and China’s
emissions are said to be either equal to, or to have actually overtaken, those
of the United States. The International Energy Agency tells us that even if
OECD countries were to bring their emissions down to zero, the world would
still be likely to miss the temperature containment target of an extra 2
degrees Celsius at which the international community is aiming. In such a
rapidly changing world, international cooperation is vital to address climate
change.
The same can be said of
macroeconomic cooperation. As subsequent G20 summits have demonstrated, whether
monetary policies, fiscal policies, currencies, the fight against tax havens or
regulation of financial activities, a virtuous path requires global
cooperation.
However, while new economic and
political trends have emerged, the rules governing multilateral cooperation
have not kept pace with these changes. In fact, we are to a large extent living
on the global rules created in the 90s, the last period of active global
governance.
In 2001, governments launched a
new round of multilateral trade negotiations, thus acknowledging the need for
international trade rules to better reflect the fast-changing pace of trade.
More than ten years down the road, despite tough negotiations, Ministers
conceded last December that the Doha Round, in its current configuration, was
at an impasse.
The same can be said of climate
change and more broadly of cooperation over sustainability issues. The Rio
Summit in 1992 was a peak in global cooperation with the birth of new conventions
on Climate Change, on Biodiversity and on Desertification. Twenty years later,
the family of the United Nations gathered in Rio last week had trouble pointing
at concrete achievements in what some have dubbed the Rio-20 Summit.
Some days earlier, faced with
markets in need of confidence and reassuring, the G20 Summit gathered in Los
Cabos and worked hard to send a united message of collaborative actions to
address the challenges of growth, fiscal consolidation and financial regulation
among other things. But it is only fair to say that progress is slow and there
remains a need to provide greater precision, starting with the eurozone.
In fact, the difficulties we are
observing in the EU mirror the troubles of the multilateral system, since
Europe remains a microcosm of the cosmos. Global governance, the legal and
institutional framework to manage the ever-growing interdependence and
interconnectedness at the world level, much like the European edifice, is built
on a thin balance between disciplines, solidarity and legitimacy. And while the
depth of integration is shallower at the global level, the mechanism and
dynamics of this balance is not different.
Let me give you two examples. The
first draws on my own experience with the Doha Round of trade negotiations; the
second relates to the multilateral action to address climate change.
The GATT, the predecessor of the
WTO, relied on the notion of “special and differential treatment” of developing
countries. In broad terms, this implied that, while developed countries agreed
to open their markets, developing countries were not expected to fully
reciprocate. This arrangement reflected the balance between disciplines,
solidarity and legitimacy in the pre-WTO multilateral trading system.
In recent years, however, the
impressive growth rate of certain developing countries has caused a big shift
in the global economy and has moved the trading system out of its equilibrium.
For some, emerging economies have attained a level of development that warrants
greater reciprocity of obligations; while for others, the income gap with the
advanced countries renders equality of disciplines unfair. The inability to
find a new balance in the multilateral trading system has so far made it
impossible to conclude the Doha Round.
In many ways, reaching a
meaningful agreement on a global response to climate change faces similar
challenges. The 1992 Earth Summit Declaration in Rio recognized that, even
though all countries bear a responsibility to address climate change, countries
have not all contributed equally to causing the problem, nor are they all
equally equipped to address it.
The principle of “common but
differential responsibility” was introduced in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that
established specific and binding emission reduction commitments for developed
countries. Developing countries had no binding obligation. The challenge now
facing climate change negotiators is to agree on a multilateral response after
the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period has expired in a world where
developing-country growth has outstripped developed-country growth.
In the last couple of years, a
worrying attitude has emerged towards multilateralism. In stark contrast to the
calls for greater and improved international regulatory coherence that dominated
the headlines during the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008,
international cooperation has slumped to an ever more precarious state.
Cynical observers of
international relations would say that over the past decade, international efforts
to forge legally binding agreements have continued to set the threshold of
expectations so low that even an agreement to continue to talk is considered a
successful outcome.
By this standard, the fact that
last year’s climate change talks in South Africa, the 8th Ministerial
Conference of the WTO in Geneva, the recent UNCTAD XIII Conference, the G20
summit in Mexico and the Rio+20 summit did not collapse in acrimony can be
considered an important achievement for multilateralism.
In my view, such cynicism ignores
the fundamental lessons about international cooperation which we have learned
over the past century. Most of all, it disregards the fact that for most
countries more multilateralism and more international cooperation remain the
only sustainable way forward.
Certainly, the changes of the
past few years dictate a re-configuration, rethink and adjustment of
traditional multilateral cooperation, including in the WTO. The proliferation
of different informal coalitions and groups of countries and civil society,
such as the G8+, G8+5, G20, B20 and L20, to name but a few, are symptomatic of
the constantly evolving nature of international relations today.
However, I believe that their
effectiveness will depend on whether they are representative enough to address
the increasingly complex challenges on our agenda. A stable global economy
cannot be built without including all key stakeholders in the decision-making
process. The architecture of global governance needs to adjust and the
international institutions that represent it need to become more inclusive and
agile so as to ensure enhanced and coherent multilateral cooperation.
More fundamentally, I believe
that while the crisis continues to hit national systems hard, it will be very
difficult to achieve high-standard multilateralism. Indeed, in what remains a
Westphalian system, a strong multilateral system requires first and foremost
strong national systems, since the essence of the consensus building remains
within the nation state.
Contrary to conventional wisdom,
international agreements necessitate a high quantum of political energy at
home. They require strong political leadership because they are about bringing
domestic constituencies on board. They are about crafting compromises which
benefit some but also hurt others. This will remain true as long as the
legitimacy of international systems remains weak as compared to national
systems.
This situation is a dangerous
one, as it risks turning into a vicious circle: exiting the crisis sooner
rather than later implies strong leadership to craft the necessary
international cooperation agreements. But governments’ legitimacy is weakened
by popular discontent generated by the economic and social hardship. This
erodes the ability to act together, which in turn further prolongs the crisis,
leading to a syndrome of “too little, too late”. Such is very much the case
today with the European situation.
I believe that multilateralism is
at a crossroads. Either it advances in the spirit of shared values and enhanced
cooperation, or we will face a retreat from multilateralism, at our own peril.
Without global cooperation on finance, security, trade, the environment and
poverty reduction, the risks of division, strife and war will remain
dangerously real. Waiting for better times will simply not suffice. A consensus
for inaction would simply mean a consensus for more pain for all. We must,
together, be bolder to cope with growing risks.”
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