This article suggests that the recent collapse of the WTO mini-ministerial, July 2008, reflects the new geopolitics of the global economy. The emerging economies are approaching trade issues and negotiations differently. Particularly they place more emphasis on supporting women employed in agriculture. There is new conviction among negotiators that poverty and livelihood issues cannot be left to the market to be regulated. These concerns contributed to the collapse alongside the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) issues. The paper emphasises that the political value of technical issues should not be ignored. Reasons for this and for why the SSM was not the only reason for the collapse include:import surges of subsidised products could displace millions of people, giving the SSM major political value; the G33, the G7 and the G20 could not find a common position in discussions on the SSM; cotton, a highly politically contentious issue, was due to be discussed after the SSM and was likely to have caused problems; and agricultural market access discussions reflected a political choice that links growth to market access and ‘offensive interests’. In conclusion the paper notes: the context of the Uruguay Round no longer exists as the emerging economies now have a voice; there may be increasing use of the Dispute Settlement Body.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
As the push toward neoliberalism advances, and quantitative measures to protect local markets, such as tariffs and quotas, disappear, industrial powers are turning to qualitative measures such as food safety regulations to further skew trade in their favour. In the food safety arena, both the US and the EU are pressing their standards on other countries. For Washington, even though its own food safety system is widely criticised as too lax, this means getting countries to accept GMOs and US meat safety inspections. For Brussels, whose food safety standards have a much better reputation, it means imposing high standards on countries that cannot meet them. Bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a tool of choice to push through the changes.
‘Neoliberalism’, has guided the globalisation of economic activity and become the conventional wisdom in international agencies and institutions (such as the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the technical agencies of the United Nations, including the WHO). Reproduced in the ‘Washington Consensus’ in the United States and the ‘Brussels Consensus’ in the European Union, this ideology has guided policies widely accepted as the only ones possible and advisable. This book assembles a series of articles that challenge that ideology. Written by well-known scholars, these articles question each of the tenets of neoliberal doctrine, showing how the policies guided by this ideology have adversely affected human development in the countries where they have been implemented.
Intellectual property is the last real comparative advantage that rich countries have, said a panellist at a recent International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) joint event. This may explain an increasing global drive for enforcement of these rights, but does not mean that such enforcement is necessarily good for developing countries.
The round table on ‘Conceptual and Operational Issues of Lender Responsibility for Sovereign Debt’ was hosted by the World Bank following the publication of a draft World Bank discussion paper entitled ‘Odious debt: Some considerations’ in September 2007. The event was organised in response to a request by a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) interested in discussing the findings of the bank’s paper and the broader issues of odious/illegitimate debt and responsible lending. This outcome report captures some of the main points raised by panellists as well as the discussions with the meeting’s participants which followed, namely, the concepts of odious and illegitimate debt, whether or not these can be considered well-established legal concepts, consideration of how feasibly these concepts could be applied in practice and practical approaches to addressing concerns on responsible lending and borrowing in the future. As follow-up some civil society organisations suggested that, if the World Bank was indeed serious about the importance of the odious debt issue, it should foster further discussions on the subject with legal experts to discuss different approaches to dealing with the problem. It was also proposed that the World Bank and a Southern CSO jointly appoint an independent auditor to examine selected credit according to mutually agreed indicators. Finally, CSOs called for the World Bank discussion paper and roundtable outcome report to be discussed by the bank’s management and Board.
A SADC Task Force of Ministers of Trade, Finance and Agriculture met on 13 July 2008 in Lusaka, Zambia to discuss measures to mitigate currently increasing food prices, the impending food crisis and ways to improve the food security situation in the SADC region. The Ministerial Task Force noted that prices of food commodities worldwide have risen sharply over the past couple of years and even more sharply from January 2007 to date. There are a number of factors that are believed to contribute to the observed increase in world food prices. Key among them are the increasingly poor weather conditions, high energy prices, worldwide reduction in levels of food stocks, massive shift in crop cultivation towards bio-fuels, increased consumption of food in emerging economies such as India and China, commodity speculation, and inadequate investment in agriculture in recent decades. However, prices in the SADC region haven’t risen quite as sharply as world prices, which provides for a window of opportunity for measures to be taken for minimising future rises in food prices. The Ministerial Task Force came up with several measures the Member States and the SADC Secretariat should take in order to reduce current and future food crises in the region. These include: increasing the levels of investment in agriculture, including aligning national budgets to the 10% of national budgets agreed to by SADC Heads of State and Government in May 2004; improving access to agricultural inputs especially fertiliser through the provision of temporary subsidies to smallholder farmers; expediting the harmonisation of Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Standards measures and removal of non tariff barriers within the region; encouraging financial institutions and NGOs to prioritise agriculture and extend credit to small scale farmers especially women and vulnerable groups; introducing social security systems targeted at the vulnerable to cushion them from the impact of increased food prices; facilitating easy flow of information among Member States and with SADC Secretariat; facilitating the establishment of a Regional Food Reserve Facility; and creating appropriate incentives for private sector involvement in services related to agricultural and food security.
One of the main agenda items of the 2008 SADC Summit is the launch of the Free Trade Area. Having completed the critical tasks of the SADC Trade Protocol, the SADC FTA was launched during the Summit on 17th August 2008 under the theme: “SADC Free Trade Area for Growth, Development and Wealth Creation”. SADC attained the Free Trade Area as of January 2008, although three of its Member States, namely Angola, DRC and Malawi are still addressing challenges facing them in the implementing the Protocol on Trade. The region was also reported at the Summit to have recorded significant progress and positive developments in the core areas of social and human development. In the health sector, positive results were recorded in combating HIV and AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Measures were put in place to increase access to preventive and curative services. Consequently, prevalence and incidence rates for HIV and Malaria declined in certain population categories and some parts of the region, with a decline in both prevalence and incidence of HIV especially among the youth aged 15 to 24 years and pregnant women attending ante-natal clinics. A 90% reduction of malaria incidence was recorded in countries in the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative where malaria cross border control initiatives are being implemented. These emerging positive indicators are due to improvements and strengthening of health systems in Member States.
The year 2008 is halfway to the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Despite some progress, this article argues that they will not be achieved if current trends continue. Starting with the G8 meeting in Japan, rich countries must use a series of high-profile summits in 2008 to make sure the MDGs are met, and tackle both climate change and the current food crisis. Oxfam proposes an agenda into the G8 this year that includes action on specific areas: stop burning food and start supporting poor farmers; mend broken aid promises; support health, education, water and sanitation for all; and put women and girls first. The report points to a similar situation regarding climate change, where it argues that a lot of the money pledged to help poor communities to cope with the effects of changing weather patterns is simply being taken from existing aid budgets or being made into loans.
Concerns ran high in some developing countries last week that their voices have been largely absent from a draft set of standards for heightened intellectual property enforcement advancing rapidly at the World Customs Organization. With the draft standards sent early - and, some say, without mandate - to decision-making bodies at the WCO, the organisation looks poised to become the next major platform for debate on global enforcement of intellectual property, as members discuss the possibility of incorporating IP protection into customs law.
In the WTO negotiations, there is a push towards the liberalisation of new services sectors by countries. However it is felt that basic services should be excluded, such as education, health, water, energy and telecommunications from the text of the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services. These services are human rights that cannot be objects of private commercial relations and of liberalisation rules that lead to privatisation. The deregulation and privatisation of financial services, among others, are the cause of the current global financial crisis. Further liberalisation of services will not bring about more development, but greater probabilities for a crisis and speculation on vital matters such as food. The intellectual property regime established by the WTO has most of all benefited transnational corporations that monopolise patents, thus making medicines and other vital products more expensive, promoting the privatisation and commercialisation of life itself, as evidenced by the various patents on plants, animals and even human genes.