Guardian (London) | November 21, 2001
The WTO talks which ended last week in Qatar were hailed as a breakthrough for poor countries. More like a disaster, argues delegate Caroline Lucas
I have a cartoon in my Brussels office of two international trade delegates who have landed on the moon. One is saying to the other: "Thank heavens, our negotiations are finally safe from the threat of democracy." Arriving in Doha as a Green party MEP and a member of the European Parliament's official delegation to the world trade talks, I was convinced that the World Trade Organisation secretariat had that cartoon in mind when it settled on Qatar as the venue.
Imagine a lunar landscape, empty but for a forest of new steel and glass buildings, cocooned in eerie isolation from the rest of the world, and you get a sense of what it was like. And the absence of democracy was a leitmotif running through the entire meeting from November 9-13. Developing countries were already furious before they arrived because the negotiating text drawn up in Geneva was weighted entirely in the interests of the rich north. But that was nothing compared to the ruthlessness of the negotiation tactics employed against them.
Immense pressure was exerted on the poorer countries by the powerful trading nations, who threatened to withdraw aid and debt relief, among other things, in order to get their way. It was these backroom bruisings that finally forced developing country delegates into resentful acquiescence. At one point, two countries - one from Latin America, the other from Africa - were threatened with the removal of agreed access to richer country markets. And Uganda was even asked by a senior US official to remove its ambassador to the WTO from Geneva because he disagreed with the US on key policy areas.
Richard Bernal, one of Jamaica's official delegates, told how his government had come under pressure to fall into line. He complained: "We are made to feel that we are holding up the rescue of the global economy if we don't agree to a new trade round here."
The EU, Britain and the WTO are congratulating themselves on getting a new round of talks, but the reality is that we now have a global trade race, with the poor countries arm-twisted and bullied into the starting blocks. None of the developing countries' main demands were even addressed in Doha. They wanted a fairer trade system, to be allowed to protect their domestic farmers, and to analyse the adverse effects of the previous Uruguay round of talks in order to inform future trade deals. They were simply ignored.
Far from this being - as the EU's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, and others have called it, with breathtaking hypocrisy - a "development round", it is a disaster for the world's poor. Take agriculture. The EU fought tooth and nail to protect its right to dump subsidised farm products in poorer countries. This, they know full well, has a devastating effect on southern farmers, who simply cannot compete against cheaper imports. Northern governments have increased agricultural subsidies, instead of cutting them, to almost Dollars 350bn (pounds 244bn) a year. As Tanzania's trade minister, Iddi Simba, said: "The wrong policy on agriculture might lose elections in France, but it loses lives in Africa".
Our environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, may have hailed Doha as good for British consumers, giving them more "choice and power", but for poor farmers in the south, the agreement spells more of the same poverty, as their markets continue to be undermined by cheaper produce from the north.
Or industrial tariffs. Many developing countries called for a study to examine the effects of tariff reductions on local industries and jobs, before being required to open their markets further. Local industries, they say, have already collapsed in most African and least developed countries as a result of previous tariff cuts. It seemed a fair and sensible proposal, but such is the nature of talks like this that every proposal becomes a bargaining chip. The fact that lives are at stake means nothing. Their request was ignored, and negotiations are to start immediately.
The results could be devastating, leading to massive job losses - and the poverty that goes with it. In Senegal, for example, a previous commitment to open their markets by cutting industrial tariffs by almost half has led to the loss of one-third of all manufacturing jobs. The same story is repeated throughout the poorer countries.
So what does the future hold for poor countries? As a result of the brave new trade round launched in Doha, it seems inevitable that they will experience even more inequality in the future, not less; that their markets will become progressively dominated by northern corporations rather than by stronger local or national producers, and that poverty and insecurity will rise.
Past experience does not bode well. More than 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than a decade ago and, as the United Nations development programme points out, it is often those countries which are highly "integrated" into the global economy that are becoming more marginal.
In spite of the fact that exports from sub-Saharan Africa, for example, have reached nearly 30% of GDP (compared to just 19% for the leading industrialised countries of the OECD), the number of people living in poverty there continues to grow. Even the IMF admits that "in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world population has regressed - arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century". Yet another trade round, on the same terms as the past ones, is only likely to make matters worse.
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