Doha redux

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

[was unsubbed and out of town when this was first published...]

Doha spells disaster for development

Anti-globalisation protestors are accused of having no positive agenda
of their own. But there is an environmental alternative to
globalisation, which can protect and raise living standards in both
north and south



Caroline Lucas
Sunday November 18, 2001
The Observer

To hear the EU, the British Government and the WTO congratulating
themselves on getting a new WTO Trade Round started, and even calling
it - with breathtaking hypocrisy - a "Development Round", you could be
forgiven for thinking this must have been some kind of victory for the
poor. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Doha spells
disaster for poor people.

As a member of the European Parliament's official delegation, I
travelled to the World Trade talks in Doha last week. It was a quiet
event - the very opposite of the blanket coverage of its previous 1999
debacle, the "Battle of Seattle." Skulking in a small state, allowing
hardly any protestors and being knocked off the news agenda by the
war, it must have seemed like the good old days to the trade
officials - meeting away from demonstrations and massive press
interest to further open up markets to the benefit of corporations and
at the price of ever rising global inequality.

But the absence of mass protests in Doha does not signal any let up in
the campaign against corporate globalisation. To the contrary, major
public demonstrations took place in towns and cities around the world
in the run-up to the meeting, and over 100 NGOs from both North and
South - those lucky enough to get one of the very limited number of
visas on offer - were present and active in Doha.

Michael Jacobs in his article last week warned that anti-globalisation
cannot help the developing world. That depends on how you define
globalisation. Those of us whose campaign is against economic
globalisation - the ever tighter integration of national economies
into one giant global economy - are convinced that resistance can and
will help the developing world. Indeed Southern activists have been in
the vanguard of such activities. Last week, for example, hundreds of
thousands of Indian farmers joined a demonstration in Delhi
specifically to protest about current WTO rules.

They know that if they are forced to open their agricultural markets
to the rich North - according to the principles of free trade that
Jacobs so applauds - their livelihoods will be devastated.

Developing country delegates at the WTO Ministerial also knew about
the havoc open markets can wreak. Rather than agreeing to immediate
negotiations on further industrial tariff reductions, for example, as
demanded by the EU and US, they called for a prior study to be
undertaken on the effects of such tariff reductions on local
industries and jobs. Their request was ignored, and as a result, they
face further decimation of their economies. In Senegal, for example,
previous commitments 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.

Indeed, more than 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than
they were a decade or more 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.
Even the IMF admits that "in recent decades, nearly one fifth of the
population has regressed - arguably one of the greatest economic
failures of the twentieth century."

Michael Jacobs challenges critics of the WTO to come up with a new
system of Trade and Investment rules designed to prioritise poverty
reduction. The Green Party, whose supporters he later lambasts as
"simplistic anti-capitalists", has done precisely that.

In a report, Time to Replace Globalisation, launched to coincide with
Doha last week, we detail a set of alternative trade rules which are
designed to replace the WTO's programme of ever more open markets in
ever more ruthless competition with each other, with a
post-globalisation alternative in order to achieve genuine
sustainability. These rules would strengthen democratic control of
trade, stimulating industries and services that benefit local
communities, and rediversifying local and national economies.

According to this new model, over time there would be a gradual
transition away from dependence on international export markets (with
every country trying to compete with each other, leading to a downward
spiral of social and environmental standards) towards the provision of
as many goods and services as feasible and appropriate locally and
nationally. Developing countries would be given significant support to
help them with this transition.

For example, the WTO's current rules require that imported and locally
produced goods be treated equally. Thus, under WTO rules, it is
unlawful for governments to favour, or otherwise promote, domestic
products above imported goods. Under our alternative rules, domestic
products would be given priority where their production increases
local employment with decent wages. Over time, quantitative controls
on exports or imports through tariffs, quotas or bans would be
permitted to this end.

Today's rules also prohibit discrimination between products because of
concerns about the damaging or unethical processes that have been used
to produce or harvest them. Under the rules of relocalisation, members
would be permitted and encouraged to make distinctions between
products on this basis in order to further the aims of sustainable
development.

Perhaps most vital for developing countries are the rules governing
agriculture. According to WTO rules, adequate protective barriers to
foster domestic farming and subsidies to support poorer farmers are
not generally allowed. Under our alternative rules, protective
barriers could be introduced to enable countries to reach maximum
self-sufficiency in food, where feasible.

Such policies have been branded as 'protectionist' - but we would be
willing to accept such a label, if it is understood that what we want
to protect are efficient national policies of cost internalization,
health and safety standards, and a reasonable minimum standard of
living for citizens, both North and South.

Historically, these benefits have come from national policies, not
from global economic integration. Protecting these hard-won social
gains from blind standards-lowering competition in the global market
is what we are interested in - not, as some would caricature it, the
protection of some inefficient entrepreneur who wants to grow mangoes
in Manchester.

A growing movement, North and South, has the courage to suggest that
more than one economic system is possible. We have shown that
alternatives do exist, and trade rules can be rewritten to support
them. In the interests of wider equity and security, it is vital that
they are.

· Caroline Lucas is a Green member of the European Parliament
representing South-East England.

Useful link
www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk

CLucas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx