WTO Meeting Commentary, January 6, 2006
Lead line: Last month the World Trade Organization held its Sixth Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong. Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt from the Institute for Nonviolent Economics offers her perspective on the year ahead at the WTO.
It was quite a feat last month that the WTO was able to achieve a Declaration at its meeting–– for the WTO was years behind schedule on this round of negotiation, they went into Hong Kong with lowered expectations, and they disagreed on key issues up to the final closing session of their meeting. In the end, the outcomes made it an historic and significant gathering–historic because it saved the World Trade Organization from institutional failure and significant because the developing countries made substantial concessions that will have major impacts on their economies without getting much in return.
The main points of the Hong Kong deal involved agriculture, cotton, development aid, services and market access in industrial goods. The various outcomes continued the hypocrisies and double standards for which the global north has become known, and there has been almost complete unanimity among the non-governmental organizations following the negotiations that the meeting was a failure in terms of development, labor and the environment.
The closing session of the Hong Kong WTO meeting could hardly have been less democratic, and this seems to reveal how it was that they were able to emerge with a text. The session was carefully choreographed to prevent delegates from participating in decision making. The Chair, John Tsang, Hong Kong’s Commerce Secretary, even acknowledged that "success is where no one is happy."
And so the crucial question is "where to from here?" The closing session was noticeably silent regarding a road map ahead. There has been some talk of a G8 summit as well as another WTO ministerial, but it seems uncertain whether the latter could be pulled off within the time required. Trade delegates are returning to Geneva mired in the same ruts in which they have been spinning their wheels for years now with many of the issues unresolved. Now they have an extremely tight deadline of April 30th for working out the full framework on agriculture and industrial goods. After that, the date for final approval in the WTO’s executive General Council is December 1-2. And then it must pass the US Congress before July 2007 when President Bush’s trade promotion authority expires.
These months provide an extremely important window for the global justice movement. The world trading system is potentially at a real turning point, especially if these tight deadlines aren’t met. This would throw the WTO into deep crisis, and it would be time to promote a new development model altogether. The visions for another world exist and have been assiduously researched and articulated. For example, see the International Forum on Globalization’s report, entitled "Alternatives to Economic Globalization" at www.ifg.org.
We do not have to accept a competitive economic system that pits, for example, African cotton producers against US cotton farmers. We can recall Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire where thousands were unemployed in the textile mills on account of Gandhi’’s efforts to sever Indian dependence on British-milled cotton. Full of resentment and indignation at first, after hearing Gandhi’s stories of Indian poverty, they then cheered him, the very man who had brought about their unemployment.
Today, US farmers could similarly support African farmers. This seems more likely if we are successful in decentralizing economic power and diversifying local production for local consumption, in promoting the local globally. By meeting as many daily survival needs locally as possible, and building basic self-reliance, we could have the security, the inner confidence, to resist corporate-driven globalization from a magnanimous heart that values the needs of all. We could build a rules-based trading system that truly serves people and the environment.
The choice is ours––do we resist the WTO from a spirit of solidarity and interdependence or from a mindset of us against everyone else? The current system is set up to create the latter, but human nature, I believe, is, at its deepest core, radiantly internationalist. |
