Reform of the CAP by EU farm ministers has made a reconciliation between farmers and development campaigners possible, writes Tom Arnold
The title of the Beatles song, The Long And Winding Road, is an apt description of the current round of World Trade Organisation negotiations. The WTO round was started in Seattle in 1999 amid loud protests from the anti-globalisation movement. Since then, key milestones have been the ministerial meetings in Singapore in 2000 and Doha in 2001. The next milestone is the meeting in Cancún, Mexico, in September which will determine if the round can be finished by the target date of January 2005.
This is the eighth such round aimed at liberalising world trade and so increasing global income and welfare. In the trade rounds from the 1940s to the 1990s the rich countries effectively set the agendas and took the decisions. But the Uruguay Round, negotiated between 1986 and 1993 and implemented from 1995 on, marked important political shifts. For the first time agriculture policy and trade became the subject of international regulation and discipline.
The current round of negotiations is marked by further political shifts. Developing countries are increasingly finding their voice and demanding that their interests be taken into account. They have made clear their disappointment with the results of the Uruguay Round.
In response and influenced by the need to promote confidence in the future of the international economic system just weeks after September 11th, ministers in Doha declared that the current round should be the Doha Development Round and that the needs and interests of developing countries should be placed at its heart.
The relative optimism created at Doha has been dissipated in the interim. Developing countries have been disappointed with the lack of progress in two areas of crucial importance to them, access to cheaper generic drugs to deal with their public health problems and agricultural policy reform by the rich countries.
On agricultural reform, ministers in Doha committed to "substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade- distorting domestic support".
At face value these commitments went some way to meeting the demands of developing countries. But advancing their implementation was left to technical discussions within the WTO and depended on detailed offers from the contracting parties.
The offers, by the EU and others, did not match the political rhetoric of the Doha Declaration. In addition, the decision by the Bush administration, in early 2002, to increase subsidies to US farmers under a new Farm Bill gave negative signals about their commitment to a fairer trading system.
So, until recently, the portents for a successful meeting in Cancún were not good. However, last month's decision by EU farm ministers on substantial reform of the CAP has increased the chances of progress, and of a conclusion to the overall negotiation by the target date of January 2005.
The CAP reform decisions will allow the EU to meet a number of demands from the developing countries on increased market access and limitations of export refunds. The US may be faced with the more difficult challenge of committing to changes in domestic farm policy.
However, it is clear that the fairer agricultural trade agenda sought under the WTO negotiations is not a panacea for all developing countries. For many of the poorest, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural trade reform is largely irrelevant to their immediate needs.
By contrast, developing countries which have the capacity to export agricultural products, or whose agricultural sectors have been damaged by subsidised imports from the US or the EU, have a real interest in a successful outcome to the negotiations.
Agricultural trade reform is one of a set of interlocking issues which will contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2000. The MDGs are a set of goals which, if achieved by the target date of 2015, would halve the number of people in the world living in absolute poverty, reduce child mortality and tackle the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
One MDG is that the number of malnourished people in the world should be reduced from the current 800 million to 400 million by 2015. If this goal is to have any chance of being achieved, there are two key areas to be addressed, in addition to agricultural trade reform.
The first is agricultural policy reform within the developing countries themselves.
Although it is the largest economic sector in most such countries, agriculture has not received the necessary attention or resources to enable it to develop.
The UN Task Force on Hunger, set up to monitor progress in working towards the MDG, will report later this year that Africa needs a Double Green Revolution. The Green Revolution which transformed the food situation in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s bypassed Africa. In the early 21st century Africa's Double Green Revolution requires improved technology (which underpinned the changes in Asia), action to improve the fragile natural resource base and a wide range of other measures.
The second relates to the crisis caused by HIV/AIDS. The pandemic is devastating food production capacity as well as all other aspects of economic life.
The countries most affected will require sustained external assistance to their productive and social sectors if they are to have any chance of development.
An agreement in the WTO negotiations obviously has to pass the test of political realism and acceptability for all the main players. CAP reform appears to give EU negotiators scope to meet some of the demands of the developing countries.
But this negotiation has other parties as well as developing countries, and the EU and Irish farm organisations will expect negotiators to defend the legitimate interests of the Irish agricultural and rural sector.
In the past, farm organisations resisting changes in the CAP to protect their livelihoods and NGOs advocating such change to assist developing countries have seemed to talk at, and past, each other.
With decisions now taken on CAP reform and with the WTO negotiations ahead, maybe the time is right for them to talk to each other, to understand their respective viewpoints and to talk about the policies which can sustain livelihoods both in rural Ireland and rural Africa.
Tom Arnold is chief executive of Concern. He is a member of the UN Hunger Task Force