Trade and environmental diplomacy: What are the key differences between security, trade and environmental diplomacy?

Paradigms of diplomacy are subject to evolution under the stresses of a modernising and globalising world. Despite the environmental awakening state primacy remains a central aspect of summitry. The preservation of security and trade relationships overshadows and stunts any ground made in relation to developing lasting solutions to systemic problems on both green house gases and CO2 emissions. A central aspect of environmental summits has been the disparities in patterns of consumption between the developed and developing world.

This is perhaps where the paradigm of North and South has its roots. There exist high levels of trade exploitation or ‘eco-imperialism’ towards the South. Financial elements like the IMF and WB which serve to stimulate underdevelopment and perpetuate the exports of cheap raw materials which afford the North its high levels of consumption and deny the South the economies of scale to precipitate economic development. The prevalence of the environmental agenda has seen the inclusion of NGOs as advocacy and policy influential stakeholders. This is an unprecedented step towards the pluralism necessary to achieve a truly multipolar globalised and healthy world.

The engagement of NGOs in environmental debate is an excessively progressive step when, compared with the relative exclusion of the least developed countries from the WTO. Agendas of the WTO towards consolidation of national economic policy lack the appropriate consultation to overcome the systemic obstacles of poverty. Grass roots poverty organisations have the regional insight and capacity to influence trade practices which would be conducive to development. If we consider the role of India in achieving the right to produce patented drugs under licence in developing countries it remains debatable whether this initiative goes far enough. As the inclusion of millions of AID/HIV, malaria and tuberculosis victims into the formal mainstream economy can only be advantageous. Similarly the role of the development of public services far out weigh the gains to be made in ecological investment in the developing world, as inclusion first builds financial capacity but more pressingly provides the margin for shifting the process of development towards more environmentally friendly initiatives.

As with the case of security, beneficial relations of economic and ecological exchange are conducive to stability as the risk of migration, economic destabilization and environmental disasters are diminished. There is however a tendency to view trade and environmental concession as destabilising to developed countries as, these relationships of exploitative exchange are what provide us with our comparative advantage in the international arena.