World Trade Organization (WTO)

BRITO Lydia

Let Africa Into the Carbon Market

> Project Syndicate, Dec 2005

http://www.project-syndicate.org/com (...)

This article calls for a change to the European bias against using credits from forest projects for its own internal carbon market, in order to allow Africa to play a larger role in the emerging international carbon market.

• Further details on the European Trading Scheme
• A selection of video clips with people expressing their views on carbon trading in Africa
• See also the website carbontradewatch.org

 read

date of on-line publication : 21 December 2005

dossier

Coordination SUD

Agriculture: for a regulation of world trade, placing development at the centre of WTO negotiations on the Agreement on Agriculture

Recommendations of the French International Solidarity NGOs on the occasion of the 6th WTO Ministerial Conference

> Gret - Coordination SUD, 2005/12, PDF, 106 pp.

http://www.gret.org/ressource/pdf/07 (...)

« International trade is [...] not the answer to the priority needs of rural Thailand, but it seems to be the only concern of the policies implemented. » This statement by a Thai small-scale farmer reflects the despair expressed by nume-rous organisations, partners of Coordination SUD’s members working in rural areas. It challenges the validity of the postulate that guides the trade nego-tiations underway and maintains that all one needs to do is facilitate interna-tional trade to overcome poverty and ensure the development of poor countries.
In this report, Coordination SUD’s Agriculture and Food Commission attempts to make more explicit the extent to which the trade policies of the past two decades have or have not made it possible to attain the proclaimed goals of fighting hunger and poverty. This work was done in partnership with organisations in the South, through case studies of six particularly sensitive agricultural products : rice, sugar, bananas, chicken, milk and cotton. Each of these products illustrates different facets of the stakes involved in commercial trade liberalisation on the multilateral level. Based on the observation that trade policies as they are currently conceived do not benefit the poorest, this report sets forth a number of proposals that aim to replace development at the centre of trade nego-tiations, and especially the negotiations that will take place during the WTO’s Sixth Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong from 13 to 18 December 2005.  read

date of on-line publication : 21 December 2005

CONWAY Kevin

WTO Accession: Tough Love or a Heavy Hand?

> IDRC, 2005-12-13

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-91906-201-1 (...)

Thirty-one countries from war-torn Afghanistan to Yemen are queued for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Despite the disarray in the current Doha Round of trade talks and the growing number of regional and bilateral trade agreements being struck outside the WTO arena, few would-be members are ready to give up their place in line. The reasons officials give for staying in the queue range from improved market access for their exports to the positive signal - a seal of approval really - that WTO membership sends to the global trading and investment community.  read

date of on-line publication : 19 December 2005

SHIVA Vandana

Will WTO Shrink or Sink?

> ZNet, Dec 2005

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti (...)

Here the author describes how economically weaker nations have learnt to exercise their power in WTO through non-cooperation and why they need to reject the “Aid of Trade” package in the draft Hong Kong Ministerial Text, viewing it as a retreat from commitments made at Doha.  read

date of on-line publication : 13 December 2005