(Scroll down for NZ Trade Minister's response)
Please
find this statement presented by Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India,
Indonesia, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines,
Turkey, Uganda, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe last Friday, July 18that the Committee
of Agriculture Special Session in the WTO.
These countries are part of an alliance or "Friends of Strategic
Products (crop exemptions in the Agreement on Agriculture) and SSM (Special
Safeguard Mechanism against import surges).
They
state unequivocally that "balance, fairness and equity seem to be remote
objectives in these negotiations." They stress that the SP and the SSM
must be retained in these negotiations without developing countries having to
"pay a price" - "We do not believe that rural livelihood and
food security concerns can be negotiated in exchange for market access. These are vital public concerns and are
therefore non-negotiable."
Trade
Information Project
Institute
for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Geneva Office
1205 Geneva
Switzerland
Statement and Declaration
COA Formal Special Session, 18 July 2003
Throughout these negotiations, developing countries have singularly and consistently dedicated themselves to addressing the gross imbalances of the subsisting Agreement. Our agriculture sectors, more particularly their abilities to support our basic legitimate development goals such as food and livelihood security, rural development and the full and unhampered expression of our competitiveness, have been unduly prejudiced by the unfairness of this Agreement.
Beyond the gross handicaps that have effectively prevented us from even the minimal exploitation of our just benefits under the multilateral trading system, our domestic markets have been deluged by the foreign competition that are heavily supported by trade distorting export competition and domestic support measures. Even as we have been exhorted to exercise due restraint, the Agreement has effectively legitimized these trade distorting measures to the extreme prejudice of our trade and developmental interests in markets domestic and international. What we got were SND provisions that were unequivocal only in the element that even spelled the diminution of our only available instrument of defense and protection: tariffs.
Rural and agricultural populations typically dominate our societies and economies. The impact of the gross unfairness of the existing international trading environment is the persisting undue extreme stress on our agricultural systems and economies. We each have our own limited areas of competitiveness and yet trade distortions, not to mention other barriers, have either prevented us from the exploitation of market access benefits or altogether shut us out of the competition. More disturbing is that even in our own markets our own producers are in increasing distress, significant proportions are destitute. Progressive government development programs have been effectively frustrated and negated and the precious but scarce resources they entail utterly wasted away.
Unbridled trade liberalization that has singularly and mistakenly focused only on tariffs elimination and blind to the other equally important elements and pillars, not to mention our development needs, has no human face and is fast dismantling, rather than helping us build, our launching pads to economic and social development - the true intent of the multilateral trading system. Such liberalization contradicts the Doha Mandate.
As in the current Agreement, balance, fairness and equity seem to be remote objectives in these negotiations. But in faithfulness to the Doha Declaration and its developmental mandate, the Chair's draft provides developing countries with two key elements in SPs and SSM that can at least provide us with some flexibility and shield to enable us to undertake our own further internal adjustments while the adverse environment of trade distortions and inaccessible export markets persist.
We hereby declare that no agreement in the modalities of the agriculture negotiations can ever be viable without these two elements together as a package in the market access pillar. Further, that any such agreement, to be viable, must first and foremost specify SP and SSM modalities that no less than fully address, in the exact words of the Chair and the Doha Declaration, "special and differential treatment for developing countries (shall be an integral part of all elements) so as to be operationally effective and to enable developing countries to effectively take account of their development needs, including food security and rural development."
We do not believe that rural livelihood and food security concerns can be negotiated in exchange for market access. These are vital public concerns and are therefore non-negotiable. Yet the provisions which developing countries are asking for in order to address these serious issues have not been favored with meaningful engagement by key parties in these negotiations. We believe that trade-offs are unacceptable given the lack of reform in domestic support.
On SPs, we maintain that there is no viable and operationally effective, and therefore acceptable, modality other than self-determination and self-declaration. We maintain that what needs to be negotiated is the number of domestically produced products, important to food and livelihood security and rural development, with due consideration of the specific situations of developing country Members. As this provision directly relates to our internal policy instruments that address adjustments to persisting conditions in the international trading environment, we maintain it but proper that measures arising from this SND flexibility and where they should be applied be the autonomous internal decision of each developing country.
Further, we view the SP provision, far from being a regressive element as alleged, as an important, if partial, balancing element for developing countries in the market access pillar.
The other partial, but equally important, balancing element is the SSM. We maintain that the SSM, which must be an improvement over the existing SSG, is an essential and necessary measure that addresses the particular susceptibility of developing country markets to import surge disturbances. Developing country markets are susceptible not only to disturbances that are seminal from the highly distorted trading environment, but other factors as well, owing to lower levels of development and transmission efficiencies.
Developed countries, with their vast array of measures from the various colored boxes, can adequately deal with such episodes of market perturbations, if and when they occur. Thus, we maintain that the SSM be an SND provision, exclusive recourse being available to developing countries.
We have been told in various occasions and ways that developing countries, by maintaining this position on the SP + SSM package, would need to 'pay the price'. We maintain that that 'price', which we have then deemed as 'investments' in the global reform process, had been paid well in advance, through our commitments under the current Agreement. We have taken the hard and painful policy decisions much earlier. It is only now that some of the major developed country parties to these negotiations are beginning to undertake their own glacial process of resolving policy reform issues. We maintain that these recent decisions can never compare in difficulty with those that we have made as early as a decade ago. We have weighed them and found them wanting when ranged against what we have already undertaken.
Given the political difficulties of some of the major developed country Members, we have not even come to 'collect' on our earlier 'investments' or 'pre-payments'. We have come to demand for a judicious stay in, and a viable defense against, any further onslaught on our unduly endangered strategic agricultural sectors that spell the very survival of our rural economies, the peace and development of our societies.
We exhort all Members, particularly the developed countries, to help each other deliver this outcome through meaningful engagement and dialogue to flesh out the appropriate viable modalities in these elements. We are ready, as we have been through these years, to engage all Members in arriving at a reasonable consensus on these particular developmental aspects of the Doha Development Agenda within the few remaining weeks to Cancun.
We also express our thanks to the Chair for the uncommon wisdom, under most difficult circumstances, in proposing these two important elements.
We unanimously declare our full support for the Chair's efforts in fleshing out the necessary integration of meaningful SND provisions in all the relevant elements and pillars of these negotiations so as to ensure the viability of rural areas in all countries, including countries with disadvantaged and vulnerable agricultural systems.
***
And here is what Jim Sutton has to say
about this:
From: Washington
Trade Daily
Volume 12, Number 148 Friday, July 25,
2003
"Speaking at the same forum [a panel discussion sponsored by the Global Business Dialogue on the ongoing Doha Development Agenda round of negotiation], New Zealand Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton expressed some wariness over providing too much leeway to developing countries in the agriculture talks.
"Agriculture producers - including developing countries - need to ensure that high tariffs are eliminated across-the-board" - New Zealand's Sutton. Messrs. Sutton and Dooley were critical of an LDC proposal to let developing countries pick their own "special products" that would be exempt from much of the market access disciplines in a future WTO agreement.
"South-south trade is growing", Mr. Sutton observed; "maintaining protectionist walls will only act to slow that trade. Allowing countries to pick their own crops for protection would only lead to lobbying campaigns by entrenched agricultural interests and end up with results quite opposite from the goals of the world trade talks".
Mr. Sutton urged specific disciplines under the new agreement.