Agriculture And The World Trade Organisation

Annotation This comprehensive reference explores the key issues and options in agricultural trade liberalization from a developing country perspective. Throughout, the focus is on ensuring that the outcome of WTO negotiations contributes to growth in developing countries.

In The Right to Food and the World Trade Organization’s Rules on Agriculture, Rhonda Ferguson explores the relationship between the right to food and agricultural trade. The analysis is situated within the context of debates surrounding the fragmentation of international law.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture has had a fundamental impact on agricultural policy worldwide. The new WTO agreements will cover agriculture,sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade and trade in intellectual property rights. This book addresses the interface between the law of international agricultural trade, the emerging legal and economic order for agricultural trade under the auspices of the WTO, and its impact on agricultural policy reform both in the European Union and the USA. With contributions from leading authorities in the appropriate areas.

Despite the Doha declaration of November 2001, the failure to start a new round of global trade negotiations at Seattle in December 1999 and the hostility of protesters to the trade liberalization process and growing global economic and social disparities was a wake-up call for the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The ambitious goal of this ground-breaking book is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of liberalized world trade, in particular in the agricultural sector, and to investigate to what extent the current WTO agreements provide the necessary fail-safe devices to react to trade-related negative impacts on sustainability, environmental protection and food security. The background and interrelationship between the WTO, the tenets of sustainable development and the unique features of the agriculture and forestry sectors are explored, and conclusions regarding the deficits of the world trade system and its conflicts with basic societal goals – such as sustainability – are drawn. Agriculture and forestry have a particular affinity with what the authors call "strong sustainability" and are to be among the major agenda items in forthcoming WTO negotiations. The book proposes that sustainable agricultural production techniques such as integrated and organic farming provide a series of related services to community and environment which could be severely prejudiced by wholesale trade liberalization and the imposition of the large-scale production methods of the mega-trade giants of the USA and Europe. And yet the concept of sustainability is referred to only tangentially in the existing WTO agenda. The WTO, Agriculture and Sustainable Development argues that, without a formal recognition of this failing, the premise that free trade is inherently advantageous for all countries is a falsehood. Further, unfettered liberalization is unsustainable and a social and environmental multilateral framework must be agreed to reinterpret or adapt a host of WTO regulations that are at odds with sustainable development. The core problem is that, under the current system, import duties can only be differentiated by direct goods and services and not by their means of production – sustainable or otherwise. Therefore, a range of environmental policy measures in the agricultural sector, such as the consideration of product life-cycles, the internalization of external costs and a coupling of trade liberalization with ecological obligations are proposed by the authors. In addition, they argue that unsustainable economic short-termism must be curbed and the use of the stick of trade sanctions and the carrot of financial benefits for good environmental performance be permitted to promote sustainable agricultural practices. This book will contribute greatly in addressing the lack of basic theoretical arguments at the intersection between trade and sustainable development – a failing that has already been bemoaned by trade policy-makers. It is highly recommended reading for all those involved or interested in the WTO negotiations, whether from multilateral organizations, governments, industry or civil society.

Contents: Energy and Sustainability, Energy, Population Growth and Energy, Turning on the Heat, Between Wish and Reality, Not Yet Fossil Fuel, The Marrakesh Declaration, What is the WTO?, The WTO is Born, New Agenda of the WTO, High World Trade Growth Vs. Output, Overview of WTO s First Year, Overview of WTO s First Two Years, WTO Has Delivered , The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and the Developing Countries, Defining the Singapore Message of WTO, WTO Negotiations on Basic Telecommunications, Developing Countries and the Uruguay Round, The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, The WTO and the Developing Countries, World s Trade The Next Challenge, International Trade with the Consumer s Money, Developing Countries After the Uruguay Round, The Uruguay Round, Africa to Gain More, Winners and Losers, Few Signs of Hope in Africa, Trading Towards Peace, The Uruguay Round and Agricultural Reform, WTO Agricultural Negotiations, Give Developing Countries A More Favourable Deal, Beyond the Uruguay Round, Trade and Labour Standards, The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, Opening Markets for Agriculture, The Future of Agricultural Trade.

Contents: The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, The Uruguay Round and Agriculture Reform, Opening Markets for Agriculture, The Future of Agricultural Trade, WTO Agricultural Negotiations, Developing Countries and the WTO Agricultural Negotiations, Export Subsidies, Market Access, The WTO is Born, The Marrakesh Declaration, What is the WTO?, Overview of WTO s First Year, Overview of WTO s First Two Years, The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, WTO Negotiations on Basic Telecommunications, New Agenda of the WTO, Beyond the Uruguay Round, The Uruguay Round, Developing Countries and the Uruguay Round, The WTO and the Developing Countries, The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) Agreement and the Developing Countries, International Trade with the Consumer s Money, WTO Has Delivered , Developing Countries After the Uruguay Round, Africa to Gain More, Defining the Singapore Message to WTO, Is Copyright on the Wrong Track?, Give Developing Countries A More Favourable Deal, High World Trade Growth Vs. Output, Winners and Losers, Trading Towards Peace, Trade and Labour Standards, Free Trade as Pacemaker, Population Gro

The volume offers to the reader a multi-faceted dialogue between noted experts from two major agricultural countries, both founding members of the Word Trade Organisation, each one with different stakes in the great globalisation game. After providing the recent historical background of agricultural policies in India and France, the contributors address burning issues related to market and regulation, food security and food safety, the expected benefits from the WTO and the genuine problems raised by the new forms of international trade in agriculture, including the sensitive question of intellectual property rights in bio-technologies. This informed volume underlines the necessity of moving beyond the North-South divide, in order to address the real challenges of the future.