The World Trade Organisation, Agriculture and Sustainable Development.
Heinrich Wohlmeyer, Theodor Quendler
Austrian Association for Agriculturale Research
Austrian Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial PlanningThe failure to start a new round of global trade negotiations at Seattle in December, 1999 and the hostility of protestors to the trade liberalisation process and growing global economic and social disparities was a wake-up call for the WTO. The ambitious goal of this ground-breaking book is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of liberalised world trade, in particular in the agricultural sector, and to investigate to which 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 one of the major agenda items in forthcoming WTO negotiations. The book proposes that sustainable agricultural production techniques such as integrated and organic farming (working within a system of widly closed materials cycles, the avoidance of pollution and the use of appropriate technologies) provide a series of related services to community and environment which could be severely prejudiced by wholesale trade liberalisation 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 liberalisation is unsustainable and a social and environmental multilateral framework must be agreed to reinterpret or adapt a host of WTO regulations which are at odds with sustainable development. The core problem is that under the current system, import duties can only be differentiated by the direct properties of 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 internalisation of external costs and a coupling of trade liberalisation 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 of trade and sustainable development - a failing which has already been bemoaned by trade policy-makers. It is highly recommended reading for all those involved in the WTO negotiations, whether from multilateral organisations, governments, industry or civil society.
Announcement:
The Book will be published at Green Leaf Publishing in July 2001 ISBN 1 874719 45 4 (£40.00 / $US75.00)
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