The Role of the United Nations and World Trade Organization

Robert L. Griffin

Introduction: Safe trade
Globalization and the rapidly accelerating liberalization of trade have brought new opportunities for countries hoping to strengthen their economic situation. However, the greater and faster trade, and the opening of new markets significantly increase opportunities for the transport of plant pests that can have deleterious consequences in new areas. Consequently, countries must exercise a certain amount of care to ensure that they do not unduly jeopardize their own resources by introducing harmful new pests. They also have the corresponding need to ensure that they do not "export" harmful pests to their trading partners.

The right and need to impose phytosanitary measures for the exclusion of harmful plant pests is recognized and has historically enjoyed strong support by all countries. But while a certain degree of caution is clearly justified, there is strong concern that, as tariffs and other trade barriers are removed, countries may impose non-tariff measures under the guise of phytosanitary protection in order to gain unfair economic advantages. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that restrictive measures are justified on phytosanitary grounds and also that other countries have the right to challenge those policies that are deemed unfair. By carefully balancing free trade and legitimate measures for plant protection, countries are able to realize maximum benefit in their efforts toward both protection and the facilitation of trade. In this context, facilitating trade and protecting plant health are not conflicting objectives, but rather a single objective -“safe trade”.

To achieve the dual aims of freer trade and limitation of pest movement, balanced, dynamic, multi-disciplinary approaches to pest management, for both domestic and foreign pest concerns are required. The approaches being adopted are increasingly based on international cooperation, sophisticated technologies and the marriage of economic and biological analyses. Internationally agreed approaches to phytosanitary policy-making are being substituted for piecemeal bilateral agreements. The evidence indicates that this shift will bring significant benefits in increased cooperation and trade as well as more effective protection.

Thus, as globalization and the liberalization of trade have matured, and international trade in agricultural products has grown in importance, it has become essential for free and fair trade to evolve still further to embrace the concept of safe trade. Internationally agreed disciplines are necessary to ensure that phytosanitary measures are used only as far as necessary but not as unjustified barriers to trade. The World Trade Organization's Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) play complementary roles as international reference points for these disciplines.

The WTO-SPS Agreement
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created in 1948 with the aim of increasing economic security and reducing international tensions by promoting free and fair trade. However, the application of GATT to agriculture and, in particular, to measures for the protection of plant health was limited. Article I of the GATT required non-discriminatory treatment of imported products from different foreign suppliers. Article III required that imported products be treated no less favorably than domestically produced goods with respect to any laws or requirements affecting their sale. Among the aspects covered by these rules were pesticide residue and food additive limits, as well as restrictions for animal or plant health protection purposes.

The GATT rules also contained an exception (Article XX:b) which eventually became the basis for the SPS Agreement. This exception stated that countries could take measures to protect human, animal or plant life or health as long as these did not unjustifiably discriminate between countries where the same conditions prevailed or were not designed to be a disguised restriction to trade. This provision in the GATT allowed governments to impose more restrictive requirements on imported products than they required for the same domestic goods provided that the measures were intended to protect human, animal or plant health.

Since 1948, there have been eight rounds of trade negotiations under GATT. The early rounds focused on lowering tariffs, and also included some agreements on non-tariff barriers. But the early rounds did not result in agreement on the fundamental issues affecting agricultural trade, and, by the 1980’s, there was increasing interest and pressure to expand negotiations to cover more fully non-tariff barriers and to include agreements on agriculture.

The Uruguay Round of negotiations began in September 1986 with a call for increased discipline in three areas in the agricultural sector: market access, direct and indirect subsidies, and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. On the latter point, the negotiators sought to develop a multilateral system that would allow simplification and harmonization of SPS measures, as well as elimination of all restrictions that lack any valid scientific basis.

On 15 April 1994, an accord was signed that not only established the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures but also founded the World Trade Organization (WTO). The SPS Agreement entered into force on January 1, 1995.

The SPS Agreement provides discipline to the use of protective measures in order to prevent such measures from being used as unjustified trade barriers. The Agreement is structured around several key principles, beginning with the sovereign right of a country to put protective measures in place, but balancing this with the obligation to ensure that such measures are based on scientific principles and evidence; the scientific principles and evidence should be considered in the framework of a systematic evaluation process known as risk assessment. Countries may impose emergency measures in the absence of sufficient information but they must search for such information as may be required to evaluate the appropriateness of measures. Those measures that are determined to be inappropriate should be modified. Transparency in the development and implementation of measures is critical throughout the process. A number of other very important principles and definitions are found in the SPS Agreement. The sum of these represents a blueprint for establishing fair and transparent measures as well as for evaluating the measures of others.

The SPS Agreement allows measures to be based either on risk assessment or on international standards. It specifically identifies the sources for such international standards. The Codex Alimentarius is responsible for human health and food safety, the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) addresses animal health, and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) is the organization named as the source of international standards for phytosanitary measures.

The IPPC
The IPPC was first adopted in 1951 but the establishment of the SPS Agreement in 1994 placed new expectations on the IPPC which were not envisaged in the original convention. After 1994, a series of consultations took place involving contracting parties to the Convention, regional plant protection organizations and FAO. The result was the formation of a Secretariat and Commission, the launching of a programme of standard-setting, and amendments to the IPPC to reflect modern practices and the new role of the IPPC in standard-setting.

The IPPC has the aim of establishing three levels of standards: reference standards, concept standards and specific standards. The Interim Commission on Phytosanitary Measures, the new governing body for the IPPC, identifies the topics and priorities for standard-setting and agrees on their adoption. The IPPC Secretariat coordinates their elaboration. International standards for phytosanitary measures (ISPMs) that have been adopted under the IPPC include: Principles of plant quarantine as related to international trade, Guidelines for pest risk analysis, Glossary of Phytosanitary Terms, and Requirements for the establishment of pest free areas. A number of other standards have been adopted or are under development.

ISPMs address important phytosanitary concepts, elements of phytosanitary systems, and specific phytosanitary measures. They provide valuable guidance for the development of appropriate harmonized systems and also for evaluating the systems and measures of others. Relatively recent standards, such as Guidelines for surveillance and Export certification systems, provide increasingly greater detail related to the design and implementation of phytosanitary systems. Standards with even greater specificity deal with particular commodities, procedures or pests, such as, for example, ISPMs under development for phytosanitary certificates, surveillance for citrus canker, and wood packing material.

The standards serve not only as models for developing measures, but also as reference points for evaluating or challenging measures. They offer conceptual, technical, and policy guidance. By using standards for designing and implementing phytosanitary systems, countries reduce the level of analytical resources needed, can expect to withstand the scrutiny of trading partners and meet their obligations under the IPPC and the SPS Agreement.

As additional standards are added and more and greater detail is agreed upon, the standards will become increasingly more valuable. However, the Convention and its ISPMs already provide significant guidance to national plant protection organizations, particularly, but not exclusively, where pest management systems and regulatory decision-making affect trade.

References

WTO. 1994. Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, World Trade Organization, Geneva.

IPPC. 1992. International Plant Protection Convention, FAO, Rome.

IPPC. 1997. New Revised Text of the International Plant Protection Convention, FAO, Rome.