The Sixth WTO Ministerial will be held in Hong Kong next month, and over just one week the leaders of the members states of the WTO will negotiate on a range of issues that have the potential to significantly impact on the lives of people everywhere.
What are some of the main issues in this so-called “Doha Development Round“?
Agricultural Subsidies
Well the first issue, and the one that certainly gets the most media time, is agricultural subsidies. Under the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), agricultural products were exempt from the prohibition on export subsidies, and, to a lesser degree, from the limitations being imposed on quotas. At the beginning of the Uruguay Round (which established the WTO), the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) was established, under which countries agreed to establish a more market-based agricultural system, including specific commitments to reduce subsidies. It was this promised increase in access to agricultural markets that convinced many developing countries to agree to WTO agreements like TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property) and TRIMS (Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures) that really didn’t work in their favour.
Well, despite these promises and the concessions that many developing countries made in return, the agricultural subsidies of the US, EU, and Japan have not been significantly reduced. Instead of committing to actually doing so in the next round, the US and the EU are trying to extract a whole new group of trade concessions out of developing countries in return for another small reduction in their subsidies. Unsurprisingly, many countries — particularly the G20 and the Cairns Group — are unimpressed.
Now, I would certainly argue that these massive agricultural subsidies should be reduced (with no strings attached). One of the key reasons for this is the importance of reducing some of the massive hypocrisy of forcing “free trade” onto the developing world, while practising anything but at home. Another reason is that these subsidies are predominately granted to large-scale industrial agriculture, which is often destructive of the environment, introduces unsustainable monocultures, and drives small farmers out of business both domestically and globally.
However, the reduction in agricultural subsidies is not actually the magic solution to poverty that people have been claiming lately. This is because, while they are certainly granted in order to protect domestic industries, subsidies do have the spin-off effect of making basic commodities cheaper overseas. If you are a farmer, which a great number of the world’s population is, this is bad, because it drives you out of business through unfair competition. However, if, on the other hand, you are an urban dweller of little means, this may make the difference between eating and starving. So, take away the subsidies, and these urban dwellers suffer because the price of food goes up. What to do? Not sure, so I’ll move on for now.
GATS
One of the trading concessions being sought from developing countries in return for these long overdue reductions in subsidies is the increasing liberalisation of their domestic services industries under the GATS (Global Agreement on Trade in Services). The “increasing liberalisation of services” is basically code word for “Privatise everything”. Under GATS, services can include electricity, education, social security, prisons, hospitals, telecommunications, rubbish collection and water. Now currently “public services” are excluded from the provisions of GATS. However, a service can only be classified as “public” if it is not provided on a “commercial basis” nor “in competition with one or more service suppliers” — so that would rule out Sydney Water, for example, or Telstra (not that this will matter for long anyway). Some of the provisions of GATS constrain governments from:
- Imposing certain regulations on services; such as cross-subsidies (so that rates are affordable for all communities), or certain environmental regulations;
- Treating domestic businesses differently from international companies; and
- Placing limits on the number of service providers in a particular industry.
Most importantly, if a government wants to make a service wholly public again — i.e. “de-privatise” it — it can only do so if it compensates other WTO members for “eliminating market opportunities”.
Under the terms agreed to in the Uruguay Round, countries are currently able to decide which services they are willing to include under the ambit of GATS. However, the EU in particular is pushing for all countries to agree to include a very broad list of services in this next round of talks. This would include water, for example, which they have been pressuring many developing countries to privatise for the last 10 years, with disastrous results — basically, full cost-recovery policies of private water companies has meant that the poorer sections of communities are effectively ‘priced out’ of accessing water, frequently resulting in outbreaks of cholera, large scale communities protests and riots (see, for example, Cochabamba, Manila, Tanzania, and Buenos Aires).
Anyway, so that and much more will be debated (and possibly decided) in just 35 days time. I’ll be there, heckling from the back and generally trying to get information for my nebulous PhD topic. I’m both frightened and fascinated to see what happens…
Onya, Cristy. Check this out–” USAID: Making the World Hungry for GM Crops”–how the US government uses USAID to actively promote GM agriculture, focusing on USAID’s major programs for agricultural biotechnology and the regions where these programmes are most active in parts of Africa and Asia.
http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC11915
Yep, they have forced countries to choose between accepting GM crops or going without much needed food aid in order to create new GM markets for their firms. Shameless.
Still, that’s hardly a news flash, I guess…
It is to some of us. I bought Peter Doherty’s new book the other day and there he was in the first chapter banging on about how those terrible greenies are denying the third world food by arguing against the “science” of GM. Threw the book right across the bathroom, I did. Funny how an immunologist can think he’s a one-size-fits-all scientist & take up being spokesperson for the biotech industry.
(What’s your PhD topic, anyway?)
That’s a bit of a mine field.
Broadly speaking, I’m looking at the impact of economic globalisation on human rights - focusing on the commodification of water (i.e. privatisation and dams).
I started with the rights to food, health and water - looking at GM and the impact of patenting on the right to food and access to medicine, but it all just got too big… I still find the topic very interesting though.
Yes, huge! Gawd. Fascinating, though. In the EU discussion you mention, is the impact of climate change considered at all?
Does your thesis, in focusing on water, also have applications for Australia? With our water wars? (A friend just gave me David Bollier’s Silent Theft: the private plunder of our common wealth. I suppose you know it?)
Cristy, thanks for this.
I’ve been interested in the WTO and spend a fair bit of time ruminating on similar topics. I’ve got four questions tonight.
First, are you sure the Hong Kong meeting is going to be on? Pascal Lamy (Director General of the WTO) has threatened to cancel the show if ‘they’ don’t come up with a solution to the agricultural subsidy problem. The final deadline for this was last week. Yes I know talks are still going on, but will the EU give way and if not is there much point to Hong Kong?
Second, how are you going to get near the meeting? After Seattle they put the next one in Doha, to keep the riff raff away. In 2003 in Cancun access was very limited and some ‘civil society’ reps allowed into the opening behaved badly. When this happens the authorities usually make sure they don’t get another chance.
Third, do you know of Aileen Kwa’s ‘Power politics in the WTO’? (pdf file) I read the first draft and was staggered at the brutality of the processes used by the major powers, especially the US.
I notice Kwa has just posted a rant about The great GATS scandal. She is a Geveva-based researcher for Focus on the Global South. I generally find her good value, but I don’t have time to read her latest tonight.
Fourth, do you think the G90 will show some backbone in Hong Kong? (They are the biggest grouping in the WTO and comprise the poor countries.) They are very easy to pick off one by one and generally lack access to support staff in these meetings. The EU, for example, had a delegation of 500 in Cancun.
If you’re bored and have nothing better to do, my piece for Webdiary Reaching for the Moon: how the poor lost and won at Cancun in part outlines my struggles with the issue of peasant v industrial v corporate farming.
1. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens with the EU and the subsidies. If they decide not to budge, then Hong Kong may end like Cancun (i.e. with nothing) - which is good in some ways, but also bad because a multilateral trading system is, for all its faults, still better than the new bilateral FTAs that are being negotiated instead.
2. I have official registration to attend the meeting as an NGO representative. They (the WTO) have divided the Convention Centre in half. One half will be the Official Ministerial, to which we will have limited access (i.e some plenaries etc.) and the other half is designated for NGOs. There will also be a number of NGO workshops being held in sites near the Convention Centre that I will be attending.
3. No, and thank you so much for the links - Focus are a great organisation, so I really look forward to reading the two documents you have mentioned. [Also, Weathergirl, I haven’t decided whether or not to do Australia yet, but probably will once I am back in the country. Bollier‚Äôs book looks really good, and I’ll certainly borrow a copy from the library when I am back on campus). If people keep being so helpful, I may not shut up about my PhD and that might just end in tears…
4. Yes I do, they already did in Cancun and they are getting more informed and more confident every round. The G20, in particular, are already adopting a very strong position and this supports many of the concerns of the G90 and the Non-Aligned Group (which have a lot of the same members).