Declaration Adopted During the International Seminar On WTO, Food Sovereignty and Alternatives to Globalization

The following is the Declaration adopted during the INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON WTO, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND ALTERNATIVES TO GLOBALIZATION organized by Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty (APNFS), Asian Farmers Network for Sustainable Development (AFA), Asia Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHRRA) and International South Group Network (ISGN) held at Boys and Girls Club, #3 Lockhart Road, Wanchai, Hongkong onDecember 14-15, 2005

STOP THE DOHA ROUND!
NO TO FURTHER TRADE LIBERALIZATION IN AGRICULTURE!
GET WTO OUT OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES!*

We, the social movements, farmers’ and fisherfolks’ organizations, women’s movements, and non-government organizations gathered here in HK from December 14-15, 2005, on the occasion of the WTO 6th Ministerial meeting, condemn in the strongest terms WTO’s agenda to further liberalize our agriculture markets at the expense of our livelihood and food security. The neo-liberalization program pushed by the WTO in the last ten years has already severely weakened protection of domestic sectors strategic to employment generation, food security and national development. The periodic import surges that followed the dismantling of protective border measures in developing countries have invariably led to significant declines in their domestic food production, collapse of traditional rural livelihoods, rising unemployment and massive rural-urban migration. Women peasants and fishers have lost control in agriculture and fisheries production, distribution and consumption. The impact has been more damaging on poorer countries particularly on low income and food deficit countries as their agriculture, which provides the main source of livelihood and sustenance to as much as 80 percent of their population has stagnated. In consequence, many of these countries have been transformed into net food importers and are now facing rising food import bills, which clearly are raising their trade deficits to unsustainable levels further worsening their precarious external debt situation. Thus a new round of negotiations that will further liberalize agriculture and remove remaining policy flexibility of developing countries will surely be more disastrous to the poor.

The WTO MC6 targets to salvage the Doha round that has been seriously hampered by the collapse of the fifth ministerial talks last September 2003 owing to the rising dissent of developing countries over WTO’s highly skewed trade rules. But behind the Doha round’s development rhetorics, the WTO’s main focus is merely that of achieving more aggressive liberalization not only in the agriculture markets but in the manufacturing and service sector of developing countries. The August framework of agreement has made sure that trade negotiations will center on WTO’s main liberalizing agenda.

Thus, it is of no surprise that the draft Ministerial text, while referring to the Doha objectives offers nothing new. Besides proposing mechanisms that are meant in the first place to win over developing countries, particularly the LDCs’ support to the Doha round, such as the Aid for Trade and other financial assistance programs, the same tried formula of more market access in industrial and agriculture goods as well as services permeates the text. In agriculture, the main agenda remains that of expanding export opportunities of rich agriculture producers and giant TNCs, while ensuring that developed countries’ escalating domestic support remain protected, again to the detriment of small farmers in the developing countries whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by agriculture dumping of the North. In others, the text contains more ambitious proposals to further liberalize trade in industrial goods and services through a deep tariff-cutting Swiss formula in industrial goods and setting numerical targets and qualitative objectives for liberalizing the services sector.

Meanwhile, in the agriculture negotiations, developing countries’ proposals to take into account their development concerns through the concepts of Special Products and the Special Safeguard Measures have received minimal treatment, even as proposals of major players like the US and the EU for enhanced market access have been given more clarity and priority. Moreover, the proposals of both the US and EU to cut down domestic spending on agriculture have been made to appear as if they are allowing trade discipline when in fact, their proposed cuts would hardly affect their current levels of subsidies since the reduction are to be made only on their permitted levels of spending. Worse, current proposals to redefine or re-categorize domestic subsidies would allow developed countries to even increase their trade-distorting support.

Given this present trend, the Doha round is bound to fail in addressing the more fundamental imbalances in the existing Agriculture Agreement and even in closing the gaping lack of mechanisms to operationalize and make effective the Special and Differential Treatment for developing countries. Worse, with the conclusion of the Doha round the existing structural inequities
in agriculture trade owing to dumping, rising trade-distorting subsidies and increasing market concentration will be further entrenched.

But while the current stalemate in the agriculture negotiations may offer a brake in the rush towards trade intensification, developed countries led by the US and the EU have been exerting increasing pressure on developing countries to support the WTO’s globalist project through pledges of aid and trade preferences designed to win over some and break whatever unified position of developing countries and LDCs. The EU has also been particularly vocal in linking improvements in the agriculture negotiations to liberalization commitments of developing countries in NAMA and services.

We condemn the increasing manipulation employed by developed countries to strike out progress in the negotiations in all three areas: agriculture, nonagricultural market access and services. We recognize that achieving any agreement in the MC6 that will push for the successful conclusion of the Doha Round in 2006 will only result to more destruction of small farmer’s livelihoods, displacement of rural communities, deepening poverty and intensification of class as well as gender inequalities.

We also view with alarm the involvement of leading G20 figures in the Five Interested Parties (FIPs), composed of the US, EU, Japan, India and Brazil. While it is not surprising since most developing country governments in fact are known to have represented more and stood for the interests of their agribusiness elite, the participation of these countries in crafting a forced consensus will seriously undermine developing countries’ negotiating position.

We call on developing countries to reject any agreements that will impose more market opening at the expense of their own domestic farmers and independent producers and to strengthen their negotiating position to exempt developing countries’ agriculture products from further liberalization on the basis of food security, livelihood security and rural development
.We however exhort them to go beyond their existing proposals on SP and SSM to accommodate other trade measures and instruments that could effectively provide protection and support to their small farmers and address debilitating import surges. Developing country governments should take as their negotiating standpoint the demands of their small farmers for
greater agriculture protection and increased domestic support and subsidies, instead of blindly following the free trade dogma of WTO.

We will work to intensify our education and information campaign as well as our mobilization activities during the 6th Ministerial meeting and will cooperate and work with other movements to unmask the development façade of the Doha Round and staunchly oppose WTO’s neo-liberal agenda.

Alongside this, we recognize the need to reclaim and defend food sovereignty. Upholding food sovereignty means giving priority to promoting domestic food production over export-oriented agriculture production to achieve food self-sufficiency. It also means ensuring that all peoples have access to adequate and safe food and that farmers and producers have access to land and productive resources. Together with other movements, we will resolutely work to stop WTO’s onslaught on food and people’s livelihoods.

Calls:

1. Stop the Doha round. Get WTO out of agriculture and fisheries.
2. Assert the primacy of people’s food sovereignty and the people’s development agenda over the trade intensification agenda of the WTO.
3. Call upon governments to review their present commitments to the WTO-AoA, impose policy measures such as raising bound tariffs and re-imposing quantitative restrictions and other non-tariff tools to respond effectively to dumping and unjust trade, and work towards revising and re-orienting domestic and trade policies away from their WTO obligations and towards desired national development goals.
4. Call upon developing country governments to reject agreements that will further liberalize their agriculture and link agriculture agreement with NAMA and services.
5. Support developing country positions that would allow effective protection of developing countries agriculture, fisheries, small-scale farmers and fishers.
6. Stop and resist on-going negotiations, including preparations for negotiations, of bilateral free trade agreements.
7. Develop an alternative trading system beyond the WTO, that should primarily target the following: elimination of dumping, curbing overproduction, regulation of transnational corporations, control of imports through various trade instruments and the strengthening of state intervention in domestic and external trade to stabilize domestic price and supply, ensure the control of women in agriculture, and ensure that the poor has access to cheap and nutritious food at all times.
8. Democratize and ensure broadest participation of sectors in decision-making involving trade and agriculture policies.

List of endorsers:

1. AINO-KAI, Japan
2. Alliance of Food Sovereignty Campaigns (AFSC),Bangladesh
3. Appropriate Technology Center for Rural Development (ATCRD), Philippines
4. Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty (APNFS)
5. Asia Pacific Secretariat for Consumerism, Advocacy, Research and Education (APS-CARE), Malaysia
6. Asia Partnership for Human Development (APHD)
7. Asia Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHRRA)
8. Asian Farmers Network for Sustainable Development (AFA)
9. BARCIK, Bangladesh

10. BINADESA
11. Cambodia Farmers’ Network (FNN)
12. Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (CECCAM)
13. Coastal Development Partnership (CDP), Bangladesh
14. Education and Research Association for Consumers (ERA Consumer), Malaysia
15. Federation of Malaysian Consumer Association (FOMCA)
16. Indonesia Food Sovereignty Network (KRKP)
17. Institute for Global Justice (IGJ), Indonesia
18. Integrated Rural Development Foundation of the Philippines (IRDF)
19. International South Group Network (ISGN)
20. Ja-Dharra, Japan
21. JJS, Bangladesh
22. Katipunan ng mga Samahan ng Maralitang Mamamayan sa Kanayunn (KASAMA-KA), Philippines
23. Pambansang Kaisahan ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (PKMP)
24. Pambansang Katipunan ng Samahan sa Kanayunan (PKSP), Philippines
25. People’s Initiative to Resist Unjust World Trade
26. Philippine Network of Rural Development Institutes (PHILNET-RDI)
27. South East Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment (SEARICE)
28. South East Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (SEACON)
29. SPTN-HPS, Indonesia
30. Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective (TNWC), India
31. VOICE, Bangladesh

Contact us:

Asia-Pacific Network For Food Sovereignty (APNFS)
#87 Malakas St., Pinyahan, Quezon City 1100, Philippines
secretariat@apnfs.org | www.apnfs.org
Telefax: +632-9250987, Tel: +632-4265518

Asian Partnership for the Development of HumanResources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHRRA)
asiadhrra@asiadhrra.org | afa@asiadhrra.org
www.asianfarmers.org | www.asiadhrra.org