WTO Public Forum: An Indigenous Perspective

SPEAKING NOTES

Pātai 2: What topics do you see as priorities for Māori?

Around 75% of New Zealand’s trade is now covered under free trade agreements (FTAs). Māori in general will benefit from the same tariff reductions and removals of non-tariff barriers among other things as all other businesses in New Zealand. What Māori were able to influence were sectors of priority under these agreements and the inclusion of Māori trade and economic cooperation chapters.

There are two core areas that Te Taumata and other Māori advisory groups have broadly highlighted as priorities moving forward for Māori:

• upgrading our domestic policies to enable Aotearoa New Zealand to negotiate firmer and stronger positions on key areas such as Intellectual Property, Data sovereignty, climate, and environment in alignment with Te Tiriti o Waitangi

• implementation of recent arrangements: Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation Arrangement (IPETCA), and the Māori Trade and Economic Cooperation (MTEC) Chapters in United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreements.

It’s important to note here that these arrangements aren’t gold standards. There was a lot we weren’t able to achieve in those agreements, particularly the MTEC chapters where institutional mechanisms or binding commitments to a programme of action were sought. But they do provide an essential platform for building, strengthening, and transforming our relationships with the United Kingdom and European Union members, as well as our partners under the IPETCA.

In the case of the MTEC in the EU-NZ FTA, our strategy in Te Taumata was to look out across three-time horizons: what we can achieve now, what we will advocate for in the near future, and what do we aspire for in the far future. For now, we focused on areas of shared or mutual interest such as research, science and innovation, climate, and cultural intellectual property with the long-term view of positioning Māori to negotiate directly with the EU in future upgrades. A similar approach would be useful with the UK MTEC also. However, our relationship with the UK has a unique history that brings with it opportunities for reconciliation through cooperation on areas yet to be agreed.

However, IPETCA – which was born in the margins of APEC – is probably one of the first real attempts at a global indigenous trade dialogue where Indigenous Peoples played a direct role in the drafting of the arrangement, despite being literally marginalised in APEC.

Currently, only four economies – New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Taiwan – have joined but is open to any economy to join, not just APEC members. And we encourage those of you here to consider joining. The prerequisite being that economies wanting to join need must commit to resourcing Indigenous Peoples participation in the institutional mechanisms that make the arrangement so unique.

The institutional arrangements have the potential to transform the concept of plurilateral partnership to one of pluri-governance through co-deciding with Indigenous representatives and transcending the politics that often unnecessarily complicate decision-making processes on implementation to the disadvantage of Indigenous peoples.

Māori trade missions are also a key element on the agenda. These missions provide a platform that can enable Māori businesses to access the commercial opportunities arising from these arrangements. But they are also broader than that. They enable the broader set of Māori trade and economic actors to better understand the markets, economies, and polities they want to build cultural, political, and economic relationships with as they plan and prepare for the future to protect our economies and livelihoods from future climate, economic or social shocks.

Other practical mechanisms include World Expo, where the launch of Te Aratini: Festival of Indigenous & Tribal Ideas at Expo 2020 Dubai provided the first platform at this major global event, where the agenda and content was determined by Indigenous peoples from seven participating pavilions. It is currently governed under the leadership of the National Iwi Chairs Forum with the intention for Te Aratini to maintain a consistent presence at all future Expo’s as an official Indigenous-led offering.

Being here, has also highlighted the importance of Indigenous participation in WTO forums to put our trade agendas on the table so that the issues that matter to us are discussed amongst the people who can influence the WTO agenda.

We want to see dedicated taskforces at the WTO. We have two in mind – an Indigenous Peoples Trade Taskforce and an Intergenerational Trade Taskforce. We’ll be talking more about this in our next panel hosted by the NZ Government.

Currently dialogue around Indigenous and trade is locked into domestic parameters, but we need to lift it to the multilateral level to ensure we can build mutually reinforcing trade narratives. The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples could provide a starting point for conceptualising how the evolution of an Indigenous taskforce might work. This is novel – and is only an idea at this stage. But one we want to take from ambition to action.