"Over the past eight decades, the multilateral economic architecture, including the trading system, has delivered a great deal for the world. We have reinvented it before. We can do so again, for people and planet," said DG Okonjo-Iweala. Her lecture, titled "Delivering on new global challenges: How we can keep multilateral coherence whilst re-imagining the multilateral trading system" explored the evolving coherence between the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, with a particular focus on the intersections of climate and trade.

DG Okonjo-Iweala noted that WTO members have the opportunity to enhance global resilience whilst making the system more supportive of inclusive growth and environmental sustainability. Existing trade rules must be made more fit for purpose rather than circumvented while new rules fit for today are necessary in important areas like the environment and electronic commerce, she said. In this way, developing countries left behind by the recent wave of global economic integration will be benefitted, facilitating interdependence without overdependence.

"This means re-imagining coherence as well," DG Okonjo-Iweala noted. "Trade alone was insufficient in 1944, and trade alone is insufficient to build the more secure, sustainable, and inclusive world we want today. The way forward for trade will increasingly be about the WTO and trade in tandem with other issues, and policies that support the original vision of coherence and do not misuse trade tools, for coercion, as a weapon, or to undermine competition."

Managing this shift will not be without obstacles, she said, but this period of transformation supported by the membership could yield tangible benefits for people, which is the ultimate goal of the organisation. "While nothing is ever easy at the WTO, we are moving in the right direction. We will manage what we can manage. Control what we can control. But we will need your help," she added. Her full remarks are available here.