The current deadlock was caused by developed countries, mainly the US, who refused to cut their massive support measures for farmers. At the same time, the US and EU were seeking to significantly increased access for their industrial goods and services to developing nations markets’. Despite claiming that they were willing to be flexible at last week’s G8 meeting, the world’s richest nations failed to bend.

“As on climate change, Bush had nothing but sweet words to offer on trade; he is squarely to blame for this current impasse. The US’s unwillingness to wean their large scale-agro businesses off their unfair support is an outrage” said Daniel Mittler, Trade Policy Advisor of Greenpeace International. “Governments must now abandon the Doha talks that have been going nowhere over the last five years”.

“The WTO failure today proves yet again, that the time of bulldozing the interests of the developing world has passed,” added Mittler. “The global community must now act to put an end to trade policies that promote the destruction of ecosystems and undermine the interests of the poor.”

Greenpeace condemned the intransigency of the United States and the European Union and congratulated key developing countries for not accepting a deal full of “empty promises and ‘peanuts’” in return for unacceptable concessions in the negotiations areas of industrial goods and services.

Greenpeace now urges the global community to conduct a complete social and environmental assessment of the global trade system. As first step, the negotiations to clarify the relationship between trade rules and Multilateral Environmental Agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, need to be shifted to an independent forum. The International Court of Justice and the United Nation’s International Law Commission are, according to Greenpeace, more appropriate institutions to take these negotiations forward. “Multilateral alternatives to the WTO exist. Now is the time for governments to explore them” concluded Mittler.