The OECD, Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development: Reorienting OECD Policy Work and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment



Introduction
The OECD stands at a crossroads in its development as a political and policy-making body. At precisely the same time, the negotiation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) under the auspices of the OECD, is poised finely between success and failure. What happens to the MAI and how the OECD responds to the social, environmental and political challenges to this draft agreement and to its economic policy-making more generally, will have a profound influence over the institutional development of the OECD over the next few years.

This paper sets out the first steps on a path of reorientation for the MAI so that any agreement ultimately concluded will support rather than undermine sustainable development. This case history is used to lead into the broader issues of the strategic reorientation and changes in working methodology necessary to make the overall work programme of the OECD support sustainable development. The paper takes as its starting point three OECD documents, containing procedural and substantive elements which provide a solid foundation for reorienting both the MAI and the broader OECD work programme. The paper also draws on NGOs' analysis of the draft MAI, and its negotiating process and the recently initiated environmental review, to flesh out more but not necessarily all the elements of the MAI reorientation towards sustainable development. Again, the recommendations made with regard to the MAI have a broader applicability within the OECD's work programme.

Insofar as many of the reforms discussed here are drawn from OECD documents, including strategies endorsed by OECD Ministers, the willingness of the OECD to move in this direction provides a test as to whether sustainable development rhetoric in the OECD is to lead to action on sustainable development, now or in the future. External observers of the OECD, who have increased in numbers as a result of the MAI negotiating process, will have an acute interest in this test. The outcome of the test is therefore likely to have important implications for civil society's perception and endorsement of the OECD and its work.

For further information contact:
Charlie Arden-Clarke,
WWF International,
1196 Gland,
Switzerland.
Tel. +41 22 995 0301
Fax +41 22 364 8219
E-mail: caclarke@wwfnet.org

Nick Mabey
WWF-UK
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UK
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Fax: 441483 426 409
Email: nmabey@wwfnet.org