Canadian trade negotiators should use the next round of world trade negotiations to help developing countries protect themselves from the negative effects of freer trade, say aid activists.
During parliamentary hearings on Oct. 16, World Food Day, activists told MPs that trade liberalization has not proven to be the boon for poor countries that rich countries promised when the last agreement was signed in 1994.
“The World Trade Organization rules, in the current agreement on agriculture, have been made by the most powerful in their own interests,” Rieky Stuart of Oxfam Canada told a joint session of the House of Commons foreign affairs and agriculture committees.
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She said richer countries often propose a one-size-fits-all formula for helping developing countries. Give them access to foreign markets in exchange for opening their own markets and they will get richer.
Senior officials from Agriculture Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency did offer committee members a version of that scenario.
Suzanne Vinet, chief trade negotiator for Agriculture Canada, said freer trade and dependable rules are a key ingredient for achieving an international commitment to cut world hunger in half by 2015.
“Trade is a key part of the strategy,” she said. “Trade liberalization is an essential ingredient but not the only ingredient.”
Stuart Clark, policy manager for the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank, offered a concrete example of how freer trade has backfired for one developing country.
He said as recently as 1985, the eastern African country of Kenya was self-sufficient in white corn production.
In 1992, a structural reform forced on the country by international financial bodies required Kenya to remove import restrictions. Cheaper corn from South Africa began to flood the market and the domestic industry has been all but wiped out.
“It is a classic example of how being forced to remove barriers allowed cheaper product to move in,” Clark told MPs.
The foodgrains bank, Oxfam and the aid agency Inter Pares joined to urge MPs to support creation of a development box for poor countries during the next round of negotiations, which could begin in November.
It would allow poor and developing countries to avoid some of the subsidy and tariff-reducing rules that apply to more developed economies, whose farm subsidies and protectionism have created low prices and farm problems around the world.
As described by Oxfam’s Stuart, the development box would include rules that allow developing countries access to developed countries’ markets while allowing the poorer countries to continue protecting and supporting their vulnerable farmers. She said the proposed development box would not require rich nations to send money.
