Source: Carnegie
Reforming Global Trade in Agriculture: A Developing-Country Perspective
Trade, Equity, and Development Series
Issue no. 2
Shishir Priyadarshi
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Summary
More than seven years after the members of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) signed the landmark Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), the benefits and drawbacks
of that accord are coming into stark relief. For developing countries dependent
on agriculture exports, the AOA has not succeeded in opening markets in industrial
countries. Even more crucially, the low-income and resource-poor farmers in
the world’s poor and vulnerable countries continue to suffer from a lack
of adequate and secure food sources, while having to contend with import surges
and other forces of global competition.
The new round of agriculture negotiations, the mandate of which was further
strengthened in the November 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration, gives the WTO
and its members a chance to rectify these imbalances. A new agreement should
give developing countries the flexibility to adopt domestic policies that are
geared to enhance domestic production and protect the livelihoods of their rural
poor.
Shishir Priyadarshi is on the staff of the Development and Economic
Research Division of the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He is responsible
for the work of the WTO’S Committee on Trade and Development, including
the mandated work arising out of the Doha Development Agenda on technology transfer
and special and differential treatment. Until recently, he was on the staff
of the South Centre, an intergovernmental organization of developing countries
based in Geneva, where he was responsible for providing developing countries
with analytical and technical assistance on issues being considered by the WTO.
The Trade, Equity, and Development (TED) Series is part of an effort by Carnegie's
Trade, Equity,
and Development Project to broaden the debate surrounding trade liberalization
to include perspectives not normally present in the Washington policy community.
The first article in the series, Doha:
Is It Really a Development Round?, by UNDP senior civil society advisor
Kamal Malhotra, gives an overview of the WTO's latest effort to meet trade and
development needs simultaneously. The project is directed by John
Audley, senior associate.
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