Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 4 • 5th February 2002
Business, Government, Civil Society Convene At Separate World Forums
Two world forums convened this week from 31 January to 4/5 February to discuss a variety of issues currently confronting the global community. Some speculate the events have a similar focus, however their divergence in approach is as vast as the income gaps they both profess to want to eliminate. The World Economic Forum (WEF), normally held in Davos, Switzerland but this year moved to New York City amid security concerns, focused on the subject "Leadership in Fragile Times". For its part, the World Social Forum (WSF), the second annual counter- conference to the WEF, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, centred on the theme "Another World Is Possible".
The WEF began in 1970 with the aim of discussing a "coherent strategy for European business to face challenges in the international marketplace." Since then, the world’s business and governmental elite have met annually in the quiet Swiss ski village of Davos. With so much political and economic clout at one event, the WEF over the years has positioned itself as the "global summit which defines the political, economic and business agenda for the year".
The WSF, seeking to show there are alternatives to neoliberal economic globalisation, formed in 2000 as a counterweight to what some perceive as the "corporate-driven WEF". Its first meeting saw an attendance of 20,000 representatives from civil society and government. The forum is now an annual event held in Porto Alegre, the heartland of Brazil’s socialist Workers Party. As renowned US linguist Noam Chomsky said in a keynote address to this year’s WSF, "the World Social Forum is really the first and most promising realisation of the traditional commitment of the left and the workers’ movements to an international forum with the interests of the people in mind."
The agendas
This year’s World Economic Forum carried six primary themes: advancing security and addressing vulnerability; redefining business challenges; re-evaluating leadership and governance; restoring sustained growth; sharing values and respecting differences; and bridging the income gap between the rich and poor to promote stability.
The WSF’s themes included the production of wealth and social reproduction (incorporating issues such as international trade, debt, aid, capital and finance); access to wealth and sustainability (intellectual property rights, sustainable environment, water, indigenous peoples and urbanisation); civil society and the public arena (democratising media, cultural identity, combating intolerance and violence); and political power and ethics in the new society (international organisations, participatory democracy, globalisation and militarism, and human rights).
WEF — aid and trade taking aim at poverty
The general consensus among delegates in New York was the need to focus more on trade and aid in the fight against poverty. While many felt that official aid needed to be increased, most agreed that trade could do more to reduce poverty. Despite this, both World Bank President James Wolfensohn and UN Director-General Kofi Annan repeated calls for a doubling, or $US50 billion dollar increase, of official development aid — with Wolfensohn going on to criticise the USA for continually rebuking this call.
At the WEF, both Mike Moore, current Director-General (D-G) of the WTO, and Supachai Panitchpakdi, D-G Designate, noted the need for developed country Members, and their corporate lobbies, to bring concessions to the negotiations launched at the Doha Ministerial Conference last November. Specifically, they touched on the need to speed up the liberalisation of developed country agriculture and textile markets, which comprise nearly 70 percent of developing country exports. Should Northern markets not open up in these areas, Moore said, "[t]his will be a 300-year round and not a 36-month round [...]". Niall Fitzgerald, chairperson of large multinational Unilever and deputy chair of the conference, noted that it was not credible for the EU to stick to its 2006 deadline of reforming its farm policies when the deadline of the WTO talks was the end of 2004.
In further discussions around the impact of the commitments made at Doha, Moore, alongside ministers from 14 countries, discussed an initiative to finance much wider participation by developing country Members in the latest round of negotiations. This initiative is in addition to the 15 million Swiss francs (approximately $US9 million) recently earmarked by WTO Members for a trust fund for technical assistance (see BRIDGES Weekly, 12 December 2001). Supachai took this point even further in noting that the success of the Doha round rested on the handling of negotiations on Investment, Competition, Transparency in Government Procurement, and Trade Facilitation (the so- called the ‘Singapore Issues’) at the Fifth Ministerial (set to take place in Mexico in 2003).
Amongst other initiatives, the WEF featured results from its Agricultural Trade Task Force. The Task Force issued a joint Communiqu that included key recommendations on the equitable reform of the global agricultural trade system, as well as "investment and capacity building efforts needed in developing countries if they are to ensure food security and compete more effectively in agricultural and processed food markets." It was signed by a variety of intergovernmental, non- governmental and private sector groups, and is available at: http://www.weforum.org/
WSF — fair trade working for people
Being a forum for activists from around the globe, with very different views and perspectives, the WSF does not seek nor claim to have any one position or solution. Despite this fact, a broad consensus did prevail at its 1 February conference on the theme of International Trade. This consensus was that free trade, and the neoliberal ideology underpinning it, does not guarantee wealth and development for nations and people. Furthermore, some participants claimed that the WTO is systemically biased against developing countries and thus its powers and scope need to be reduced accordingly — some suggesting as far as subordinating it to the United Nations.
The workshop looked at putting trade and export-oriented growth in it their "rightful place" in the development paradigm and sought the use of alternative trading regimes based on fair trade — "which seeks to make trade, and the economy in general, serve better the people engaged in it, and not just corporate interests at the top of the trading pyramid." There was also a great deal of focus on the impact of trade on areas which carry the greatest impact on the most marginalised people of the world — most notably that of agriculture.
On that topic, proposals ranged from taking agriculture out of the WTO completely, to forbidding dumping in the agricultural sector, to the development of a ‘Universal Right on Food Sovereignty’ — which would seek to protect local markets, stabilise prices, and provide greater choice to consumers on the type of products they consume.
"WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Anti-Globalisation Event Opens in Brazil," UNWIRE, 31 January 2002; "WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: World Bank Presses U.S. to Increase Foreign Aid," IHT, 31 January 2002; "GLOBAL ECONOMY: Forums Open In U.S., Brazil," Wofensohn Urges More Aid" UNWIRE, 1 February 2002; "Conference Synthesis: International Trade" WORLD SOCIAL FORUM, 1 February 2002; "US-EU want more poor countries at trade round," FT, 3 February 2002; "Brazillian City Sees a Good Side to Globalisation," IHT, 5 February 2002; "WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: Annan Calls On Business To Help The Poor," UNWIRE, 5 February 2002.