President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, is famous for saying that we should “never let a good crisis go to waste”. And let’s make no mistake about it, we are in crisis. While the world’s attention is largely focused on the financial meltdown, with a side order of climate change, we may soon need to face up to the fact that we are living what Australian environmental business expert Paul Gilding calls “The Great Disruption” – the confluence of a major economic breakdown and the unraveling of the global environment. And, while our leaders are busily wheeling out stimulus packages in a desperate attempt to kick-start the faltering economy, the same is not possible for the global environment. In the words of Glen Prickett of Conservation International: “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts”.
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March 20, 2009 / climate change, G20, trade, wto
Tags: climate, environment, sustainable development, trade, wto
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Even though the global economic crisis is far from over and may unfold in hitherto unexpected ways, the interests of developing countries, especially as they relate to the multilateral trading system, have definitely been implicated in ways that ought to force a rethink of national priorities. The purpose of this note is to identify a number of matters where crisis-related considerations should alter national calculations.
Tags: developing countries, Doha Round, G20, protectionism, trade
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The G20 Agenda, Trade and the Developing World
Comments OffBold trade and financial initiatives will be required to control the damage that the current crisis imposes on developing countries and to assure their economic recovery. At the highest level, the G20 will need to consolidate its position as a forum where substantive coordinating efforts can take place. A positive, concrete, action agenda needs to replace the emphasis on declarations of principle and the reassertion of willingness to cooperate. In addition to these efforts to provide substance to the agenda, two political challenges must be faced. The first is how to consolidate in developed countries a view that the enhanced role of the G20 over that of the G8 should become a permanent feature of global economic governance rather than a stop gap maintained only during the crisis. The second, similarly daunting challenge, is one of ensuring that developing countries are convinced that their interests are adequately represented by the developing countries that are G20 members.
Tags: developing countries, G20, trade
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Trade is one of the first casualties of a global economic crisis. We saw this happen during the Great Depression, after the oil shocks of the 1970s, in the early 1980s, and now the first contraction in global trade since 1982. A reformed and robust trade monitoring system should be among the top priorities for world leaders meeting in London in April and beyond. Many argue that the priority for governments should be to ‘fix’ the crisis first; reforming the governance of the global trade (and financial) system could come later. That would indeed be a mistaken strategy and a lost opportunity. It would be mistaken because better trade monitoring could determine the difference between a coordinated response and a deepening crisis. It would be a lost opportunity for reform because the current crisis sharply exposes the deficiencies in trade governance, which if tolerated any longer would only serve to delegitimise a rule-based trade system.
Tags: developing countries, G20, monitoring, trade, trade policy review, wto
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The motto of the G20 leader’s forthcoming London Summit is “Stability Growth Jobs.” The world economy is producing an insufficient amount of all three of these economic virtues and so it is appropriate for powerful governments to get together in London to try to improve and coordinate their social, economic, and environmental policies.
Tags: G20, protectionism, trade, wto
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Globalization’s Systemic Shifts and Seismic Shocks: Perspectives for Developing Countries to 2015
Comments OffIn the last 30 years since the onset of the Chinese open economic reform program, the world has experienced profound systemic shifts, with arguably more in the past two centuries. Much of this change/transformation has had highly positive impacts. The misnamed “emerging economies,” many of which in fact are old civilizations with long histories of sustained and dynamic trading activities, have definitively ended the long period of exclusive Western global economic dominance. As the global market has expanded well beyond anyone’s imagination, the world, especially the developing world, has experienced unprecedented rates of growth. However, as Jean-François Rischard has argued in his compelling book High Noon: Twenty Global Problems – Twenty Years to Solve Them (2002), while markets and new information technologies experienced exponential change, the development of institutions and mentalities has been linear at best. This dissonance is at the origin of the gaping global governance gap that characterises the world today; it is well illustrated by the continued failure of the WTO Doha Round negotiations, extending over eight years-in fact, for virtually the whole of the 21st century to date! This is not an auspicious first decade to a new century.
Tags: G20, globalization, protectionism, trade, wto
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March 17, 2009 / G20, trade, world bank, wto
The recent food, fuel and financial crises have imposed large external shocks on households and firms in all developing countries. They have prompted questioning of the risks and rewards of globalization and identified areas where the global governance of trade urgently needs improvement. (Here, I broadly define good global trade governance as international cooperation in the form of a set of agreed rules that reduce the negative spillovers of national policies affecting international flows of products and production factors.) At the same time, the financial crisis has revealed the robustness and importance of the trading system. A major feature of the current crisis is the dog that did not bark: that is, to date, we have not seen the widespread imposition of the types of trade protection that characterized the 1970s and early 1980s, not to mention the 1930s.
Tags: developing countries, G20, trade, wto
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It’s enough to make you want to blog
Comments OffMarch 17, 2009 / aid, financial crisis, imfIn good times or bad, there is one commodity which Africa always enjoys in abundance: namely, advice on fiscal responsibility. The real scarcity today is the flow of finance needed to prevent the economic downturn from turning into a human development reversal.
Tags: Add new tag, aid, financial crisis, imf, kevin watkins, mdgs
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March 17, 2009 / financial crisis, G20, trade, wto
The most important trade advice one can give to leaders participating in the G-20 London Summit is, Do no harm. The risk of harm is real, since the group’s composition and preparatory process, both oriented to financial issues, are ill-suited to trade or the World Trade Organization (WTO). Some countries important in the WTO are not invited to London, but many members of the G20 have little or no role in WTO negotiations in Geneva. Officials responsible for trade policy have not been involved in developing the texts for leaders. Nevertheless many analysts want the G20 to take an activist role on trade. Leaders should resist that temptation in favour of playing a catalytic role.
Tags: G-20, trade, transparency, wto
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March 17, 2009 / financial crisis, G20, imf, trade, world bank, wto
Development should be the centerpiece of reforming the global economic architecture. Pressing to conclude a World Trade Organization (WTO) deal to close the Doha Round based on the current proposals circulating in Geneva would be counter productive. Instead, we offer five policies for reforming global trade that will enable economic development and stimulate the global demand needed for a global recovery.
Tags: developing countries, G-20, trade, wto
