Doha trade talks a lost opportunity

1 August 2008

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Responding to the collapse of the talks, Rob Cameron, Chief Executive Officer of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International said, “An important opportunity has been lost. This comes as farmers are already under extreme pressure with high costs of inputs, transportation and local food”.

However, for many developing countries, no deal was seen to be better than a bad deal. The final straw leading to the collapse of the talks came as the US refused to agree to developing countries’ proposals to allow them to adopt Special Safeguard Mechanisms to help them protect vulnerable agricultural sectors from sudden surges of agricultural imports and falling prices.

Europe and the US were also heavily criticised by NGOs and developing country negotiators alike for refusing to abolish their own trade-distorting subsidies, whilst simultaneously toughening their demands for market liberalisation in key service and manufacturing sectors. The US had offered to cap its agricultural subsidies at $14.5bn, twice what it currently pays farmers (estimated at $7-8bn a year).  In the cotton industry, US subsidies are widely credited with depressing world prices, undermining the possibility of sustainable livelihoods for cotton farmers particularly in West Africa.  

The collapse of the talks may be a mixed blessing for banana farmers in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.  The long-standing banana dispute between Europe and Latin American producers over the special preferences for ACP countries had resulted in an agreement to reduce tariff levels by 35% for non-AC P suppliers – a victory for the Latin American banana growers. Meanwhile, for the ACP bloc, led by Cameroon, this represented an acceleration of the loss of preferential access to European markets. In the end they had conceded this ground only on the understanding that a significant aid-for-trade package would be made available to compensate and support the restructuring of their industries. However, banana growers in both West Africa and the Caribbean feared that the agreement would strike a fatal blow particularly for small scale banana growers struggling to compete with large industrial Latin American plantations.  With the collapse of the Doha round, the banana agreement is also lost, and so the dispute between Europe and Latin America now looks set to continue into the future. 

As world trade talks have stumbled along in recent years, banana and cotton growers have increasingly turned to Fairtrade to provide a means of survival in an increasingly competitive market, offering consumers sustainably produced crops  in return for fairer prices and the opportunity to  improve their communities and their business prospects. Whilst politicians and diplomats ponder the collapse of the talks and whether they can ever be resuscitated, one thing is clear: small farmers need Fairtrade now more than ever, and that’s a deal we can still offer them.

Read statements from members of the Trade Justice Movement here