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Speaking in Vancouver at the Wall Centre on June 23, 2008, the United Nations' assistant secretary-general for economic development lashed out at a process that many world leaders have touted as a possible solution to skyrocketing food prices.
“They are claiming that what they are doing is going to address it. But I think that that is actually dishonest and misleading,” Jomo Sundaram said. He was speaking about the Doha Round of WTO negotiations.
In May 2008, Director-General Pascal Lamy had said, “The reasons why we must conclude the [Doha] round this year are visible to all of us and they are becoming more critical by the day....Although the WTO cannot provide anything immediate to help solve the current [food] crisis, it can, through the Doha Round negotiations, provide medium to long term solutions.”
But Jomo claimed that it is an “uncomfortable truth” that the WTO is incapable of bringing down food prices. Touting the Doha Round as a solution to the global food crisis is “more than a red herring; it is a deception”, Jomo said.
“I think the current director-general of the WTO sees it as a feather in his cap if he can get a deal done. So getting the deal has become an end in itself,” he continued.
Jomo argued that to alleviate the global food crisis, it is necessary to significantly alter the world's current trading systems. “One of the big problems is you can't have a level playing field,” he said.
But UBC professor James Brander, an expert in economics and government, argued that the rules of international trade are not to blame for the global food crisis. He said more fundamental issues are behind rising prices. “To put it pretty simply, there are more and more people who need to eat,” Brander said.
He pointed to two of the world's fastest growing economies as examples of the stresses population growth is placing on the world's food system. “Given the income level that India and China started from, as incomes rise, they tend to want to shift to more resource-intensive types of food — in other words, more meat.” (Source: Straight.com)
July 1, 2008
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