What can the World Trade Organization (WTO) contribute toward addressing global hunger? IATP asked four experts from the Philippines, France, India and the U.S. at last week’s WTO Public Forum in Geneva. You can listen to the discussion here.
Of course, there was the usual argument about whether trade liberalization helps or hinders food security, but there were other important points of consensus:
- Despite high-level calls and declarations to address the food crisis last year, nothing has been delivered to improve the coherence of global governance on food and agriculture: a major failure of the post-food crisis response.
- The WTO is still unable to take into account rural development and food security concerns in its treatment of agriculture. Instead, it consistently reinforces an unsustainable model, characterized in particular by market concentration. Ambassador Bhatia of India pointed to a few improvements, but insisted that they fall far short of the needs.
- The IAASTD report, a global assessment of agriculture at the turn of the 21st century, provides recommendations for the way forward on agriculture which WTO members should take on board to put the multilateral trading system back on track.
As the Doha negotiations remain deadlocked, IATP believes there is space to keep pushing on these issues. Next week, we will host a meeting in Washington, D.C. on the role of food reserves in responding to the global food crisis. We will also continue to push these issues at the World Summit on Food Security in November, at the WTO Ministerial Conference in December, and at the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December. Stay tuned!
