UNCTAD´s timely new study on the energy and environmental services sectors is intended to help policy makers and trade negotiators get a better understanding of what is at stake in the ongoing GATS negotiations at the WTO on these two services sectors.
The publication - entitled Energy and Environmental Services: Negotiating Objectives and Development Priorities - analyses the negotiating positions of WTO members in these two sectors. It looks at national strategies, business trends and the key players in the energy market - one of the largest sectors in the world economy, with an annual turnover of between $1.7 trillion and $2 trillion - and in the environmental market, which boasted annual revenues of $522 billion in 2000. It shows that energy services - exploration, extraction, drilling, transport and brokerage - represent the value-added in the energy chain and have a huge economic value. The two sectors also are closely linked to economic growth and investment, country competitiveness and, ultimately, sustainable development. In addition, the study presents the successes of some developing countries in developing domestic environmental and energy services sectors and in exporting those services.
The 12 contributions on energy services emerged primarily from an intergovernmental expert meeting organized by UNCTAD. They discuss how increasing demand for investment, the introduction of new technologies and the liberalization of energy markets have created a new dynamism in this sector and paved the way for the delivery and cross-border trade of an increasing number of energy services. On the other hand, they also highlight the plight of one third of humanity, mainly in the rural areas of poor countries, who still have no access to commercial energy sources.
The status and influence of oil-exporting countries in the trading system may soon change, as countries representing more than half the world´s oil exports will soon become WTO members.
The four contributions on environmental services analyse how this sector, which as undergone deregulation and privatization, now offers lucrative business opportunities for services providers. They highlight the efforts that should be made to link the growing dynamism of the sector, resulting from its structural reform and emerging as well from the WTO Doha work programme, to meeting people´s basic environmental needs, especially in developing countries.
The WTO services negotiations have now entered their most crucial phase - the formulation of requests and offers. Around 25 countries, including the United States, the EC and its member States, Japan, Canada, Argentina and the Republic of Korea have presented their initial offers. All countries, but especially developing countries, may draw on the information and analysis contained in the publication to assess the options available to them when developing their own requests and offers and evaluating the requests and offers presented by other WTO members. The study will also guide them through the linkages between the services negotiations and the other WTO negotiations that have a bearing on energy and environmental policies, such as those on subsidies, anti-dumping, market access for non-agricultural products and trade and environment.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero will launch this publication at a round table on "negotiating objectives and development priorities in energy and environmental services", to be held at 3 p.m. Thursday, 5 June, in the Palais des Nations, Room XXVI. Participants include Andrey Sharonov, Deputy Minister of Trade and Economic Development of Russia, and João Luis Aguiar Machado, Chief Services Negotiator of the European Commission.
