NGO Media Briefing featuring Fred Smith and Myron Ebell

NGO Media Briefing<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />

Environmental and Fair Trade Linkages:

Threats to Global Prosperity

Friday, 12th September

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />12:00—13:00

Room 13, NGO Centre, Hotel Sierra Cancún

Speakers:

Alan Oxley, Chairman, Australian APEC Study Centre, Melbourne;

Fred Smith, President, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington;

Barun Mitra, Director, Liberty Institute, New Delhi

Moderator: Myron Ebell, Director, Global Warming and International

Environmental Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington

Attempts to use WTO trade sanctions to enforce extraterritorial environmental and other standards on developing countries present one of the greatest threats to economic development in poor countries.  Environmental and “fair trade” linkages also threaten to undermine further trade liberalization under the WTO.

Alan Oxley will discuss his recent study, European Unilateralism: Environmental Barriers and the Rising Threat to Prosperity through Trade, published in August 2003 by the Australian APEC Study Centre.  Mr. Oxley is former Australian Ambassador to the GATT, 1985-89, and former Chairman of the GATT Contracting Parties and founder of WorldGrowth.org.

Fred Smith is president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the leading free market public policy institutes on environmental regulatory issues in the U.S.  He is an expert on trade and environmental linkage, including the possible consequences of the WTO appellate body’s Shrimp-Turtle decision.

Barun Mitra is Director of the Liberty Institute in New Delhi and one of India’s foremost advocates of economic development through free trade, especially for India’s poorest citizens.

For more information, please contact Myron Ebell at 998-120-9508 or Jody Clarke at CEI in Washington, D. C., at 001 (202) 331-2253.