This year saw some fantastic sessions organised by a variety of international NGOS, all of which can be downloaded as MP3 audio files here.

To save you some time, I’ve picked out the ones I think are probably of most interest to readers of this blog:

• Climate-change policies and trade rules: Conflict or coherence? – Organised by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), and Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE).  Download the audio here.

• A new global contract for food and agriculture: What can the WTO contribute? – Organised by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). Download the audio here.

• Human rights impact assessment (HRIA): A pertinent tool for informing and improving trade governance? – Organised by 3D for Trade — Human Rights — Equitable Economy. Download the audio here.

• Labour and environment provisions in bilateral and regional agreements: Challenges for the multilateral trading system

• - Organised by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD). Download the audio here.

• Multilateralism, our global crises and strategies for the future – Organised by the South Centre and the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University.  Download the audio here.

• How do agreements on trade in services have a role in the financial crisis and the measures to deal with the economic crisis? – Organised by the Third World Network (TWN) and Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO). Download the audio here.

• Fundamental human rights at work and the role of the WTO:  operational routes – Organised by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Download the audio here.

That should keep you listening for a few hours!

Apparently the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been trying to undermine the Rudd Government’s election promises to require “disclosure at point-of-sale of species, country of origin and any certification” and “identifying illegally-logged timber and restrict its import into Australia”.

The article also quotes Alan Oxley, who runs Melbourne-based consultancy ITS Global, and is known far and wide for his work organising conferences to promote the denial of climate change, lobbying on behalf of Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau (implicated in widespead illegal logging & human rights abuses in PNG) and for setting up a business lobby group for the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. (Follow the above links to pages from Sourcewatch, and online watchdog which has some good background on Oxley & his company.)

If you’re reading this and would like to do something, please consider emailing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd or emailing or phoning – (02) 6277 7500 – Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and demanding that they commit to fulfilling their election promise to restrict imports of illegally logged timber into Australia.

“For too long we have been focused on expanding and maximising energy exports, without proper protection for our own future generations.”

What?  Read that again – not only is he arguing for “protection” of particular interests against the blind short-termism of maximising Australian exports for short term gain, but he is doing it with his vision set of the rights and needs of “future generations”!

For decades environmentalists have argued that the rights of future generations need to be taken into account when decisions about resource extraction and pollution are being made.  And for years “fair traders” have argued that the needs of people and then environment should take perference over the simple maximisation of exports for short term gain.  It’s incredibly exciting to realise that these concepts are now well and truly mainstream.

There are a large number of ways that the global trading system and climate change interact, but the most obvious is in driving emissions production by creating new markets for carbon intensive products.  For example, GTW research has shown that almost 40% of Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are created by production for export, rather than by Australians themselves.

And of course Australian politicians complain about China’s huge and growing GHG emissions, yet continue support Australia’s huge coal exports to China which create a large chunk of those same emissions.

It should not go unmentioned that the global trading system also has the potential to contribute to the solutions to climate change – for instance by creating markets for clean, renewable technologies.  But for the moment, the system continues to add significantly more to the problem of climate change than it does to the solutions.

With this in mind, In June, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) – an NGO based in Canada & Switzerland that has been doing excellent (if a little conservative) research on trade & environment issues since 1990 -  held a conference on trade and climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This week they’ve released the background papers from the conference, and there’s lots of interesting reading if this is a topic that you’re concerned about (and let’s face it, who isn’t concerned about climate change? – apart from Andrew Bolt).

You can access the papers and other conference material here.