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Michael Meacher calls for new environmental world order

Speaking at 11.30am on Thursday, 4 March, at the Green Group Conference, Michael Meacher called for significant and far-reaching reforms in the neo-liberal trading system which has increasingly impoverished developing countries and damaged the environment.

He called for:

1. a new post-Cancun world trading agenda which repudiates US-EU domination of the WTO and incorporates key demands of the developing countries;
2. strengthening of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) with powers of legal enforceability on a par with the WTO;
3. establishment of a World Environment Court where issues of major loss or damage to the world environment can be brought either by member states or by public interest bodies bringing cases which meet a test of overriding international public interest, with full powers of enforcement;
4. compensation for countries damaged by major environmental disasters or climate change, funded by a Tobin tax on cross-national speculative financial flows, which a ½ % rate is estimated would raise £200 billion a year.