The Cancun World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting concluded last weekend with little progress on a swath of issues it must try and complete by Jan. 1, 2005. Agriculture subsidies were the main stumbling block, but the talks really failed on a number of other fronts including trade and environment.
Trade and environment negotiations are stuck at the committee level. Although still considered to be at the "examination" stage, Cancun was an opportunity to send a positive signal to dislodge the blockage that has kept this front from moving to a higher political level. Ministers were silent, too busy with other priorities. That these talks cannot seem to find traction, even when mainstreamed in a trade round, raises the question of whether it is time for a judicial solution instead of a multilateral one.
Part of the agenda agreed at the launch of the Doha WTO Round in 2000 was to try to finally settle some of the outstanding issues between environmentalists and free-traders, a row that has plagued the WTO since its inception.