Seattle, USA. November 30,
1999. Thousands of people protest outside the venue of the ministerial talks of the
WTO (World Trade Organisation). Riot police are called. Curfew imposed.
Why are these people so
angry? What are they fighting for? Who are they? And do you know what those grim looking
ministers of 134 governments of the world were discussing behind closed doors? What is
going on?
Actually nobody knows. So we
decided, in this issue, to try and make sense
of all this chaos. Because what happened at Seattle is too important to be ignored.
Decisions taken at the WTO talks affect millions of people around the world. Including you
and me. As informed global citizens stepping into the new millennium - Be Involved! |
The
World Trade Organisation (WTO)
is based in Geneva in Switzerland. Counting the years it existed under another name GATT
(the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) the WTO is fifty-one years old this year. (It
got its new name in 1995). That means that it has spent 50 years! trying to break down
trade barriers between nations.
But it is only recently that the WTO has begun to think about the
environment-friendliness of its policies on trade, or to wonder how world rules on trade
between industrialised and developing countries might be unfair to the poorer ones. If you
think that possibly age has nothing to do with wisdom, you are right when it comes to the
WTO.
The
WTO believes in a FREE MARKET – which sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
– but it is actually more tricky than that. The idea is that any nation can trade
anything its likes with any another nation. Of course, it’s never as straightforward
as it pretends to be, because all sorts of problems arise when one country tries to stop
another country selling it say, beef treated with lots of unhealthy hormones, or steel
which is so cheap that nobody will buy the more expensive local steel anymore.
Then there are those members of the WTO Club who seem to believe that a free market
should be tailored to suit them like a close fitting Nehru jacket – instead of being
baggy enough to encompass varying sizes, situations, setups and budgets. The US, for
example, is a particular stickler for its own priorities and can be a bully to nations who
disagree with it. It often uses its highest court to settle international trade disputes
when the WTO doesn’t tow its line (though it usually does).
All in all 134 countries, including India, are now members of the WTO. That equals a lot
of different needs, and wants, and priorities – and ARGUMENTS! Add to this heady mix
the worries and anger and complaints of all those protesters who came to Seattle furious
and upset with the trade rules of global governments, and you have a dish so spicy most
people found it hard to take… Bemused and confused?
We certainly were. So to help us understand better what on Venus all that fuss was
about, in this issue of Gobar Times we have
rummaged far far back in the mists of time to uncover trade’s origins on earth
...wrecked our brains to explain what all those strange and wonderful terms really mean... and broken the big dispute between
nations up into three clear categories of how it all went haywire for the WTO.
But first, we want you to look around
you, as we did this month, and just observe all the tradingthat goes on - EVERYWHERE! Like
religion and laddoos, humans can’t seem to
do without it. Was that you who exchanged a Sachin card for a Steve Waugh? Is it your Mum
who runs a shop? Your Dad who sells shares? Your sister who bought a bubblegum last
Saturday after school? Trade makes the world go round... But as with anything, there are
ways and means, and some means and ways of trading
are simply a whole lot better or worse for the environment, the developing world, you and
me, than others. Think about that as you trade your way through the next few weeks. Ask
yourself how it should really be done. And then
– let us know!
TRADING BLOWS
 The Big Fights
 |
America
and Europe are in the middle of a bust-up over three BIG Bs – Beef, Biotechnology,
and Bananas |
Bully - beef
Europeans
HATE American beef. 90% of US farmers raise their cows in confined spaces and don’t
give them grass to eat. Instead, they are feed a diet of hormones to make them grow bigger
and stronger quicker. This kind of treatment is not only UNFAIR on the cow (and
that’s not what Europe is cross about) it is thought to be BAD for the person who
eventually eats the meat - causing cancer, nerve disorders and all sorts of other health
problems. Because it will take a number of years for the effects of hormones on humnas to
become apparent, they haven’t actually been proved scientifically yet.
Nevertheless, in 1989, the US promised that it would only sell healthy hormone-free
beef to Europe. But this year, Europeans discovered to their horror that beef with hormones in it had crept into
the market. Hence the mega bust-up!
Now the US is complaining that Europe’s beef bans go against WTO rules. In
revenge (and to pressurise Europe into changing its mind), it has drawn up a blacklist of
up to $900 million worth of European products sold in America such as raspberry jam and
scooters!… Meanwhile US farming groups have demanded $500 million in compensation for
their lost beef trade. Oh heck.
Batty biotechnology
And although Americans are happy to eat food
made from scientifically-developed (rather than naturally-grown) crops, these
‘genetically modified organisms’ (GMOs) have Europeans in a helluva rage. Scientists and
environmentalists have renamed GMOs frankenstein
foods because they believe that they dangerously threaten the genetic purity of plant
species as well as the biodiversity of the environment. US exports of GMOs have caused a
fearsome fuss in Europe. As with hormone-beef, however, their harmful effects are easy to
predict but difficult to prove – and until that happens, the WTO has banned them from
being banned!
Have they gone bananas?
The
US is also hopping mad with Europe for putting quotas
on the bananas it buys. In order to support the fragile economies of 71 developing
countries in the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific, the European Union has ruled that at
least 3% of its banana imports must come from these countries. And rich multinational
banana firms in the US are jealous! They have their eyes on the lucrative Europeon market.
Germans are said to be the biggest consumers of bananas in the world.
Sir Leon Brittan, who decides European trade disputes, told the BBC that the US
government’s banana position is influenced by the MONEY big banana companies give to
political parties and American Senators. Well, there’s nothing new in that - trade is
money, and money talks (check out our protest page
for proof).
Look
what happens when a POOR country complains about international trade: absolutely NOTHING!
Nobody took any notice when Ecuador objected to European banana purchase policies because
Ecuador isn’t a rich importing nation and therefore hasn’t the clout to bargain
with its richer partners.
Hmmm. So who said something about free and fair trade? The WTO? Wrong! - it sided
with the US, allowing sanctions to be imposed against European goods, and forcing the EU
to rethink its banana quotas. If these quotas do change, the results will be disastrous
for Caribbean countries, in particular. They depend solely on banana exports for their
livelihood. |
I
am ze 100% pure bred indigenous
farming stock of ze local ethic originne ...ever since I got my EU grant!
– French
Farmer |
 Freebies
for farmers
Cheap
labour in the developing world panics industrialised countries into imposing protectionist policies.
In addition to tariffs
and import restrictions and bans of third world crops and goods, heavily
industrialised countries such as Britain, France and Japan shell out cash in the form of
subsidies to keep their farmers in work.
$280 billion is spent
on subsidies each year! Which is 10% more than the total value of the agricultural produce
sold.
Developing countries
protest the unfairness of a free market in which some farmers are given lots of extra cash
to stay on the job.
But the European Union
defends subsidies on the grounds that farming has multifunctional benefits for
society… meaning that it guarantees areas of open space and preserves the natural
environment (although it doesn’t always, as we know).
Is this a lame excuse?
It may seem so to us Indians, who live in a country whose population is 74% agricultural, but the industrialised world is
facing the problem of rural depopulation… due to the lack of employment in the
countryside. |
1.5 billion people live on less than $1 per day. Nearky 90% of
India's workers are informally employed . For these people, trade rules make no difference
 |
Seen
but not heard: the workers who make the rich man richer |
For
many of the world’s poorest people, trade is quite literally a matter of life or
death. In Bangladesh, textile exports provide income for millions of women who work in
cloth factories. African villagers live on the money they make growing tea, coffee, and
cocoa to sell abroad. Corn farmers in the Philippines face the daily threat of competition
from cheap subsidised US exports.
 10,
000 of us steel-workers lost our jobs because of foreign steel imports!
And ah dont like like that Mr WTO!
—US
Worker
|
The
protesters converged on Seattle to make the world remember labour. But they weren’t
all there for the same cause. While the American steel-workers blamed world trade for
flooding the market with Asian steel which is so cheap they have lost their jobs, the
human rights
In the industrialised world, where trade is converted into stocks and
shares, it is easy to forget the people on whom it all relies
The UN says that the working conditions in
the developing world will only improve when rich countries remove trade barriers and bans,
and make the free market fair
activists blamed world trade for allowing too many of those Asians to
work for too little money, for too long. Same problem, different point of view. See? all
those
people got hot under the collar about one thing - CHEAP third world labour.
Cheaper the labour: cheaper
the goods
In industrialised countries, labour standards are very strictly controlled.
Governments fix a MINIMUM wage, and it is illegal to pay less than that. Nothing of the
sort happens in developing countries like India, where it is up to the employer how much
he pays his worker. With so many people (including children) desperately in need of work,
some employers pay their employees tiny amounts of money. As a result, the goods they make
are less expensive than those made in industrialised countries.
Because of the cheapness of third world labour, some Western
manufacturers have set up factories over here. Human rights activists say that this is
EXPLOITATION of the developing world’s inability to name its price and demand a fair
wage (see the photograph below).
But cheap third world labour also has Western manufacturers and labourers (like the
USsteel-workers) in a panic about competition from third world goods. As a result, their
governments impose tariffs or BANS on cheap imports from abroad, or they give extra money
to their own workers (called SUBSIDIES) to supplement their earnings.
Either way, how can the third world worker win? The UN claims that if the free
market was fair, developing countries would be able to increase their exports by
$700 billion! Hopefully this would provide better terms of employment for millions
of the world’s poorest people.
I am saying let the Richie Rich of the world pay the right price to poor countries
for importing oil for cars, beef for burgers, fancy stitched clothes...
– Gobar Times
person |
 In the poorest countries of the world, children work because
their families need money. In South Asia alone, there are 20-40 million children in work.
But simply banning child labour is not the answer. Will it really help the child in
desperate need of cash?
|
A
Down To Earth Supplement
