'No Deal Better Than a Bad Deal'

WTO-SPECIAL:
'No Deal Better Than a Bad Deal'
Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Dec 12 (IPS) - What might be considered a failure at the World Trade Organisation talks this week could actually turn out to be its success, leading non-governmental organisations say.

"No deal is by far better than a bad deal," Eve Mitchell from Friends of the Earth told IPS. "We cannot see a bad deal, bad for the poor people, bad for the environment, bad for climate change come out of Hong Kong, and somehow call it a development round.."

At present a "'development round' has been turned into a market access round for multinational companies, and that is not pro-poor, sustainable development," she said.

The NGOs are looking to ministers from the developing countries to take a firm stand against developed countries at the trade ministers meeting in Hong Kong, Dec. 13-18.

"Countries like Brazil and India are seen as leaders, not only in their regions but globally for developing countries because they have a certain strength and a certain status," Mitchell said.

"They are naturally seen as people who can be authority, also because of their populations and the sizes of their economy," she said. "All those kinds of things make them very strong, and they need to stay strong."

She added: "We can't possibly see what's on the table at the World Trade Organisation now can be good for poor countries. So that means that if countries like India and Brazil have to hang on in there until a good deal comes through, then that's absolutely what they should do."

What is on the table at present is a deal that means that "the poorer you are, the worse off you're likely to be," she said. "The numbers that governments like the European Union and the United States are looking at are global averages. What's going to happen to people on the ground?"

Of particular danger are the proposals on non-agricultural market access (NAMA), she said. "What we found is a number of very disturbing things. Over a billion of the world's poorest people, people who are already living on less than a dollar a day, will be worse off under NAMA."

That proposal is bad for development and also bad for the environment, she said. "NAMA will threaten our ability to grapple with climate change, which will hurt all of our economies in the end. So that can't be a good deal. We've got to stop it now, and start going in the right direction."

Alex Wijeratne from ActionAid said Indian commerce minister Kamal Nath has already taken a bold stand. "He's saying to the EU and the U.S. that they have to do more than just look at the issues those guys are interested in, and they have to take on board the concerns of developing countries much more."

The NAMA proposals "could be devastating for India, for many industries such as the sari industry or footwear industries," he told IPS.

The leaders at Hong Kong need to think development, he said. "This was always supposed to be the 'Doha Development Round.' But development has totally dropped off the agenda." The series of negotiations was named after the Qatari capital, where the WTO ministerial conference was held in 2001.

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson "could easily back off on the aggressive moves he's making on the two other areas rather than agriculture," Wijeratne said. "He's being very aggressive on the NAMA talks and also on the services talks. He's asking for very big concessions from developing countries. Obviously he can also make much bigger offers on cutting farms subsidies, and back off on the tariffs as well."

Like Friends of the Earth, ActionAid, a Britain-based international anti-poverty NGO, also believes that no deal is better than a bad deal.

"We want to see a development round," Wijeratne said. "We don't want to see a round which just plays to the self-interest of the U.S. and the EU. And until that is on the table, we would say be very cautious about signing this round, because there's very little that's going to help fight poverty. And after all this is what this whole round was supposed to be about."

What is at stake in this round is "life or death issues," he said. "If you're a poor farmer from India, and then you're flooded with crops from the EU and the U.S., your livelihood is in danger."

But the powerful countries will have a fight on their hands this week, he said. "We know that many, many groups are going to be in Hong Kong for the big WTO ministerial. They're not going to take this lying down. They see how important these talks are, that this could have a profound impact on the fight against poverty."

(END/2005)

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