Trading Africa

What Africa really needs is for her children, women and men to be able to live with dignity and security – to live without fear of dying from a bullet, diarrhoea, malaria, hunger, floods, AIDS, or any of the other myriad of preventable death warrants that take so many peoples lives before their time. Africans need to share and celebrate their lives with the rest of the world, so that the beauty, diversity and uniqueness of Africa is respected and protected. Africa does not need more handouts from the rest of the world, but rather to be given the space to grow and breathe. Many Africans and their allies tried to raise these concerns and feed them into a sustainable development agenda at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) – with limited success. Despite major opposition, the WSSD relinquished responsibility for the implementation of sustainable development to big business and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Trade, the powerful countries argued, is the key to implementing sustainable development, and the WTO is the appropriate institution to do this. What a delusion! Especially for Africa.

A problem of paradigms

The WTO equates trade liberalisation with development and believes it can be made “sustainable” merely by including environmental concerns. It believes that the three pillars of environment, economy and society can each be built separately instead of in an integrated way, and that it has the responsibility for building a fair and equitable global economy. But it gets even this pillar wrong! Trade liberalisation will always favour strong economies. At its basis is a need to increase production and consumption which is fundamentally contradictory to the urgent need for sustainable production and consumption –  an imperative barely tackled in the WSSD. Therefore we need to talk about new forms of trade and new kinds of economies. This would mean radically altering the basic premise, principles and rationale of the WTO.

A question of principles

Fairness and equity are key requirements for sustainability. Recognising this, the Principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities was agreed at UNCED in Rio 1992 and affirmed at the WSSD. It says:

“States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command.”

On this basis, African countries, which have contributed very little to global environmental degradation, should be much better off than highly industrialised, over-consuming countries after questions of ‘trade and environment’ and ‘trade and development’ have been settled. Yet this is unlikely to happen within a WTO characterised by trade-liberalisation imperatives and skewed power dynamics. A reframing of the trade-environment-development nexus needs to take place. In particular, the question of ecological debt should be addressed. This surely should be the basis of any trade or investment agreement.

Disrupting democracy

Although it proudly asserts that decisions are made by consensus, the WTO is by no means a democratic forum. The Doha Ministerial meeting which launched what is commonly called a ‘development round’, was every bit as manipulated and undemocratic as Seattle. Key deals were negotiated by rich countries in closed-off “green rooms”. Serious civil society engagement or protest was effectively barred by Doha’s remote location. In such a climate arrogance and cynicism flourish, and despite its development “spin”, the Doha Declaration does little to create the conditions for Africa’s development. There is no real commitment from developed countries to anything new and “developmental”,  and their actions since then (to increase subsidies on agriculture, renege on public health commitments for cheaper medicines, to push for access to services) show the real cynical interests behind the rhetoric. We have seen that those who argue most loudly for trade liberalisation are the first to counter its spread where it harms their own economies or frightens their voters.

An assault on the poor and the environment

The Agreement on Agriculture is a weapon against small-scale peasant farmers and food processing industries in Africa. In conjunction with the TRIPS agreement and Structural Adjustment Programmes, it pushes up the price of production for small-scale farmers (through patents on seeds, reduction in agriculture extension services, encouragement of pesticide use etc), while at the same time condoning the dumping of highly subsidised, artificially ‘cheap’ food from Europe and America onto African markets. Fisheries, which are vital to the food security of people living next to coast and lakes, are pillaged by large companies with expensive technologies (subsidised by their governments) that harvest indiscriminately, removing peoples traditional access to their source of food. WTO agreements entrench and exacerbate the flow of resources from small producers to large, from subsistence to commercial, from poor countries to rich.

So what should Africa do?

Assess the problem

While promoters of trade liberalisation claim that the WTO is key to combating poverty and advancing development, they are strongly opposed to developing countries’ calls for an evaluation of the impacts of various WTO agreements. Before there are any more negotiations, let’s assess how successful the existing agreements have been. Let’s look at them in relation to improving household food security of the very poor, in bringing people water and energy, in protecting the integrity of ecosystems so that people can continue to benefit from their environments. On these counts, the WTO does not look very good. A thorough assessment of  the socio-economic and environmental impacts of new and existing trade agreements is long overdue.

Disempower the WTO
Bringing new issues and negotiations e.g. on investment, cleaner technologies etc. into the WTO is likely to give it more power – and in areas only marginally related to trade. African countries do not even have the capacity to implement current agreement, let alone negotiate new ones. Instead of expanding and strengthening the WTO, our governments should meet commitments made under UN agreements which are more in line with sustainable development, human rights and justice.

Protect public health, public services and food security
The TRIPS Agreement undermines national legislation to protect peoples' rights to health, education and food security, and encourages biopiracy. Africa has come up with a solution and alternative in The African Model Law on the protection of the rights of local communities, farmers and breeders, and for the regulation of access to biological resources.

Trade in marine resources currently favours northern countries and large-scale industry. Access to fisheries is used as a condition (overtly or covertly) for small countries to trade other products. Any agreement on fisheries should strengthen the right’s of small-scale and artisinal fishers for food security and remove incentives (subsidies) to pillage the oceans.

Further liberalisation of services under GATS could undermine access to basic services such as water and energy. These services should be protected and excluded from any negotiations. Liberalising environmental services will make it harder for us to develop our own, indigenous technologies, services and processes. It is in Africa’s interest to ensure that there is no further liberalisation of services until the social, economic and environmental impacts of existing GATS commitments have been evaluated and mitigated.

Build global democracy

The WTO has undertaken to resolve potential conflicts between Multi-lateral Environmental Agreements and its own agreements. Surely the United Nations, with a more balanced socio-economic and human rights agenda is the better forum for managing the relationship between global trade and human rights and socio-economic, cultural, environmental impacts. This requires our governments to actively support and strengthen UN structures.

Protect and build local markets

Many African countries are pushing for fairer market access. While this is important, it alone will not solve domestic development or poverty problems and could exacerbate environmental degradation. Instead of trying to compete in an international game that is heavily loaded against Africa, African governments must re-orient economic production for local markets and needs, rather than for already saturated and over-consuming northern markets. Thus NEPAD, Africa’s export-led growth policy should be open to debate, discussion, public consultation and redirection.

Stand together, with civil society 

The WTO works on the basis of power relations, not rules. But the aggressive strategies of rich countries also exposes their level of desperation. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. In this context it is critical that Africa presents a united front. African governments must stand firm against new issues and further liberalisation of services. They must demand that rich countries honour their commitments to parallel imports of essential medicines and reduced agricultural subsidies. They must put in place mechanisms to ensure that extraction of resources – oil, diamonds, wood – do not lead to bloody conflicts. At the same time, they must look to their citizens. Mobilisation of African civil society – through public debate and active engagement between governments, business, labour and non-profit civil society organisations – is the only way to shift the power dynamics of the world and the WTO.