Source: Carnegie
For Immediate Release: August 23, 2002Contact: Scott Nathanson, 202-939-2211, snathanson@ceip.org
World Food Security, Bush Development Policy Highlight New WSSD Resource Center Analyses
In its continuing efforts to provide critical and pertinent thinking on key issues pertaining to the Johannesburg Summit, the Carnegie Endowment added two new resources to its WSSD Resource Center web page (www.ceip.org/wssd).
Reforming
Global Trade in Agriculture: A Developing Country Perspective
Noted international trade and agriculture expert Shishir Priyadarshi looks at
the rising inequities stemming from the 1994 Agreement on Agriculture (AOA).
Priyadarshi concludes that the agreements' stated goals to reduce trade barriers
and increase food security for the developing world have not been met. Instead,
methods designed to reduce or eliminate industrialized nations' agricultural
protectionism have merely served to institutionalize it. "These countries
now enjoy a unique privilege among members of the WTO, in the sense that the
AOA gives them the legal right to continue to distort agricultural markets,"
he notes.
The failure of the AOA has had a disproportionate impact on developing nations. "Agriculture is a way of life for most people in many developing countries, " Priyadarshi says. Therefore, "even small changes in agricultural employment or prices can have major socioeconomic effects in developing countries." As a solution to the AOA's shortcomings, Priyadarshi advocates an approach that would protect impoverished farmers in the developing world, as well as staple crops required for domestic food security. It would also provide employment opportunities for the rural poor, as well as improved movement of surplus production.
Bush
Faces a Credibility Challenge at the Johannesburg Development Summit
In a new Carnegie Endowment issue brief,
John Audley, director of the Endowment's
Trade, Equity, and Development Project, reviews the Bush Administration's
goals, rhetoric, and actual initiatives leading up to the WSSD. He determines
that the administration's WSSD agenda-limiting the issues addressed at the summit
to key health and environmental areas, and pressing developing nations to accelerate
internal reforms in order to aid in their own development-has some validity.
But the conflicting and often incoherent policy statements and actions it has
taken up until now have robbed President Bush of what he would need the most
in order to successfully press his agenda at the Johannesburg Summit-credibility.
For copies of these publications, contact pubs@ceip.org or visit www.ceip.org/wssd.
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