Documentation of an expert workshop and outlook 29.6.-2.7.2003 on Vilm, Germany
Published by Euronatur and Germanwatch
52 pages
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Foreword
Aspects of environmental protection and nature conservation are hardly taken into account in the current WTO agriculture negotiations. The negotiations are focussing on reductions in tariffs and trade distorting subsidies rather than on sustainable development issues. The WTO is very much coining the agricultural debate with its liberalisation and deregulation agenda. Instead the real underlying question behind the WTO negotiations should be about how multilateral rules in agricultural trade have to be designed in order to achieve sustainable rural development in the South and the North. But this major concern gets thrust into the background at the WTO.
The inter-linkages between trade, development and environment guided the Rio conference on environment and development in 1992. It was a major achievement in Rio to acknowledge the effects of poverty on the environment in the South, and the responsibility of the North in contributing to poverty via its use of trade distorting support in agriculture and its overuse of natural resources (e.g. climate change). But the effects of trade distorting support i.e. dumping on poverty and the environment in the South are not seriously taken into account in the WTO agricultural trade negotiations. Especially the latter does not play any role as such.
Euronatur as an organisation committed to nature conservation and Germanwatch as a North-South-Initiative committed to fair rules in agricultural trade therefore jointly organised an expert workshop on the Island of Vilm at the end of June 2003, supported by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), with funds from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU). The workshop was entitled "WTO Agrarian Negotiations and Nature Conservation: Towards Sustainable Rural Development in the North and the South". The workshop brought together experts with a trade or environment background from the South and the North sharing their knowledge and discussing ways ahead. The key question was about the agricultural trade framework needed in terms of subsidies and tariff protection in order to allow sustainable rural development. One major topic was the subsidy issue starting from the common aim to reconcile the need of subsidies for the promotion of sustainable rural development in the North and the need for reducing trade distorting support in the North for putting an end to dumping and its disastrous effects on farming in the South.
The debate on reconciling environment and development issues in agricultural trade negotiations is quite a new one. The outcome of the workshop is thus one important step ahead but this issue deserves still much more attention, more reflection and more study. Sustainable rural development is crucial in the fight against poverty and in the conservation of biodiversity and natural resources as the basis of life of future generations.
Matthias Meissner
Euronatur
Marita Wiggerthale
Germanwatch
Berlin, November 2003
Table of contents
Foreword
Euronatur, Germanwatch
Wrap up of the agricultural trade negotiations
Marita Wiggerthale
Integrating agriculture trade and agri-environmental policy
Santiago Perry
The case of Mauritius
Jean Nöel Humbert
The case of Poland
Mariusz Maciejczak
The case of Kenya
Thomas N. Barasa
The case of Columbia
Santiago Perry
The case of Mongolia
Ravchigiin Samiya
The case of India
Milind Murungar
The CAP - an environmentally harmful instrument of agricultural policy
Matthias Meissner
Trade, development and environment - the neglected inter-linkages in agriculture
Marita Wiggerthale
Bringing sustainable rural development issues into the Agreement on Agriculture
Marita Wiggerthale
Common Statement: "To balance the imbalances in the WTO-Agreement on Agriculture"
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after Luxembourg
Matthias Meissner
What’s next in agricultural trade negotiations?
Marita Wiggerthale
Annex I: WTO legal texts on aspects of sustainable development
Annex II: Workshop programme
Annex III: List of participants of the workshop
Annex IV: Short presentations of the organisers
(also available in German, see 03-1-10)Documentation of an expert workshop and outlook. 29 June - 2 July 2003 on Vilm, Germany