Time to kill off Doha, Pascal Lamy is wrong: the Doha round of talks offers nothing to the world's poorest countries. The WTO has failed to deliver

Time to kill off DohaPascal Lamy is wrong: the Doha round of talks offers nothing to the world's poorest countries. The WTO has failed to deliver
 
John Hilary guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 November 2009 17.00 GMT

Monday 30 November marks the 10th anniversary of the Battle in Seattle, the day in 1999 when 100,000 protesters took to the streets and prevented the World Trade Organisation from launching its millennium round of free trade talks. The WTO is marking the occasion with another ministerial summit, and is understandably nervous – not because it fears another spectacular uprising (the summit is being held in genteel Geneva) but because the future of the WTO as a credible institution once again hangs in the balance.

Foiled in Seattle, the WTO did eventually manage to launch its new round of trade negotiations in Doha two years later. A barrage of threats and blandishments overcame developing country resistance to the idea of starting another round of trade liberalisation, at a time when many of their economies were still coming to terms with the problems caused by the previous Uruguay round of trade talks, which concluded in 1994.

Yet since then the talks have collapsed again and again. The EU and US have pressed hard for developing countries to open up their industrial and services sectors to foreign imports, while steadfastly refusing to reduce their own agricultural subsidies in real terms. Developing countries have banded together to fight off the worst of EU and US aggression, but have not managed to realise the mythical "development agenda" that they were promised.

Despite this, WTO director general Pascal Lamy is now calling for the conclusion of the Doha round on the grounds that it will help the poorest countries out of poverty. His new-found concern for the world's poor is certainly touching. When he was European trade commissioner, he made a name for himself by driving through EU corporate interests without the slightest care for the rights of poor countries or poor people. Nor has he done anything in his present job to suggest that he is on the side of the oppressed.

More importantly, Lamy's claim that the poorest will benefit from the conclusion of the Doha round is utterly without foundation. Academic assessments concur that the deal currently on the table will mostly benefit the world's richest countries, as well as certain export sectors in powerful developing countries. The World Bank's analysis shows that 80% of gains from the Doha round will go to high-income economies, and that the six countries of China, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Argentina and Brazil will scoop up almost all the rest.

By contrast, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are set to lose out once again, as are other states that will see their existing trade preferences eroded, such as Bangladesh. Just as the Uruguay round left the least developed countries hundreds of millions of dollars worse off than when they started, so too will the Doha round. Within individual countries, too, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are set to suffer.

This is why there is now a growing call for the talks to be abandoned. The international trade union movement has called on all member governments of the WTO not to sign the deal currently on the table, in view of the devastating impact it could have on their industrial and manufacturing sectors. As shown by War on Want's recent research into the employment impacts of trade liberalisation, millions of jobs across the world are at risk from the measures proposed by the WTO.

Finance specialists are also calling for the immediate suspension of the WTO's financial services negotiations, which aim to further liberalise and deregulate financial markets despite the fact that such liberalisation is widely agreed to have been a primary cause of the current crisis. The Stiglitz commission set up by the United Nations has gone further, calling for existing WTO restrictions on financial market regulation to be repealed.

The international farmers' movement has called for a complete end to the WTO's agricultural negotiations, which threaten rural development and the livelihoods of small-scale farmers the world over. The environmental case for halting the Doha round is just as urgent. Environmentalists have shown how the "business as usual" approach to trade, industry and agriculture advocated by the WTO will wipe out any gains from progress at the Copenhagen climate summit.

The WTO has failed to deliver. No amount of wishful thinking will transform it into a body that can offer solutions to the very real challenges facing our planet in respect of development, poverty, climate change or people's rights. The Doha round should be abandoned without further delay, and a new process put in train to undo the damage already done by past trade liberalisations. That would be a fitting way to mark the 10th anniversary of Seattle.