If you have a relevant resource (books, papers, bulletins, etc.) you would like to see announced in this section, please forward a copy or review by the BRIDGES staff to Heike Baumüller.
THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE WTO. By 3D and FORUM-ASIA, December 2004. This Practical Guide seeks to enable human rights advocates to be effective in their work relating to international trade, by describing how the WTO works, examining some examples where it affects human rights, pointing out ways to find practical information about WTO and other trade rules, and giving pointers for future advocacy work. The Guide is designed as a practical tool, and can be used when designing new work programmes; for mounting campaigns; in training programmes; and for general information on the WTO.
MARKET ACCESS FOR HIGH-VALUE FOODS. By Anita Regmi, Mark Gehlhar, John Wainio, Thomas Vollrath, Paul Johnston, and Nitin Kathuria. Agricultural Economic Report. February 2005. This report examines global food trade patterns and the role of WTO market access rules in shaping the composition of global food trade. The report finds that market access remains a major impediment for expansion of global trade in high-value foods, particularly processed foods. Tariff escalation, in which tariffs rise with the level of processing, discourages trade in high-value foods, and trade remedy measures, such as antidumping duties, are concentrated among high-value products. The authors conclude that a uniform cut in tariffs increases trade in high-value foods more than trade in raw agricultural commodities and improves real wages in developing and developed countries.
LEGAL ASPECTS OF IMPLEMENTING THE KYOTO PROTOCOL MECHANISMS - MAKING KYOTO WORK. Edited by David Freestone and Charlotte Streck. Oxford University Press, February 2005. This book provides full coverage of emissions trading, ‘carbon finance,’ which will dominate the implementation of Kyoto. It aims to contribute to the development of the market for carbon emission reductions, which is also one of the objectives of the Kyoto mechanisms.
PROCESSED FOOD TRADE PRESSURED BY EVOLVING GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS. By Anita Regmi Mark Gehlhar, in AmberWaves, February 2005. This article discusses the stall in food trade since the mid-1990s, even as the sales of processes foods continually grows. The authors conclude that even as the food industry becomes more global, food demand is being increasingly satisfied at the local level where food suppliers are better able to meet specific demands of local consumers.
DECOUPLING EU FARM SUPPORT: DOES THE NEW SINGLE PAYMENT SCHEME FIT WITHIN THE GREEN BOX? By Alan Swinbank and Richard Tranter, in The Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, 2005. Recent reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has led to reducing the link between support and production. The new Single Payment Scheme will simplifies the application arrangements for subsidy payments by replacing ten major CAP payment schemes with one new single payment. The EU believes that the Single Payment Scheme will qualify for green-box status in the WTO, policies that have little to no effect on production. The paper examines this argument, particularly in light of the recent WTO panel report on upland cotton.
AGRICULTURAL WATER QUALITY AND WATER USE: DEVELOPING INDICATORS FOR POLICY ANALYSES. By the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, October, 2003. Water quantity and quality problems caused by agriculture raise questions about sustainability of some of the current practices in agricultural sectors. The environmental impact of irrigation is an issue of increasing importance to agriculture. There is increasing awareness that agricultural chemicals, pathogen and viruses diffuse into the environment with the potential to impact human health and environment quality. Against this background the report reviews current approaches to monitoring, modelling and the economic validation of water quality and water use issues related to agriculture and the environment.