A year ago, sea turtles marched with teamsters through Seattle streets to protest a closed, antidemocratic, and environmentally hostile organization. In all, some 50,000 people gathered to charge that the World Trade Organization elevates free trade above protection of public health, the environment, and workers’ rights.

A year later, the charges still ring true. While the United States has taken small steps toward opening up its procedures to public scrutiny and participation, the WTO remains as secretive and insular as ever.

The U.S. has made several suggestions for opening up the WTO’s process. The WTO has refused them all.

At home, the U.S. has begun slowly to open up its trade apparatus. After a decade of pressure, the Clinton administration has adopted rules that require environmental reviews of trade agreements. Under court order, the Trade Representative has appointed environmental representatives to panels that give advice on trade in paper and forest products and will do the same with its panel that deals with chemicals. The U.S. has begun to lead by example, but it still has a long way to go.

In Seattle, the WTO hoped to launch a new round of negotiations to expand the organization’s activities into new arenas, including the hotly controversial topic of genetically altered food and seeds. One result of the collapse of the Seattle meetings, ironically, suggests that removing contentious issues from the WTO and submitting them to another international body can bring relief and progress that the public will support.

In this case, the debate over GMOs (genetically modified organisms) avoided the WTO and continued under the auspices of the Biodiversity Convention, an international environmental institution that operates in the public eye with environmental observers and participants.

These "biosafety" negotiations produced a set of rules that would never have emerged from the WTO. Upon receiving advance notice, each country will have the right to refuse to import genetically engineered plants and seeds to safeguard biodiversity.

The WTO, however, is hostile to the "precautionary principle," which suggests that a new food, for example, be proved safe before being widely distributed, a sort of look-before-you-leap approach that shifts the burden of proof from the recipient (who must prove a commodity is dangerous in order to refuse it) to the producer (who must prove that it is safe).

The WTO’s first foray into the food safety debate—its attempt to force members of the European Union to import U.S. beef grown with growth hormones, was not only a diplomatic disaster; it also firmed up European support for the precautionary principle, which then carried the day at the biodiversity negotiations.

One small ray of sanity: A WTO panel recently upheld a French ban on asbestos imposed because of public health concerns. Canada—the world’s leading asbestos producer—challenged the ban as an illegal restriction on trade. The initial WTO ruling, which is on appeal, relied heavily on asbestos’ tragic record, documented by body counts. It is unlikely to mark a WTO turnaround on the precautionary principle. More likely, it reflects the fact that asbestos is as deadly as it is well-studied.

And the sea turtles are back before the WTO. When four Asian countries challenged U.S. rules requiring that shrimp exported to this country be caught in ways that do not harm endangered sea turtles, the WTO decided that the U.S. must change its rules. It did, but not sufficiently to satisfy Malaysia, which has gone back to the WTO, arguing that how it catches shrimp is no one else’s business.

The protests in Seattle changed the debate, calling into serious question the WTO’s authority to pass judgment on laws that protect public health and the environment. Outside the WTO, change is occurring, slowly trending toward openness and respect for environmental values. Within the WTO, however, the deck is still stacked against environmental protections. Change there is likely to occur at a turtle’s pace—if at all.

- Patti Goldman is the Managing Attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Seattle. She won a lawsuit forced the US Trade Representative to include environmental representatives on US Trade Advisory Panels.

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