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Blame! Game? Cotton on.

Martin Kunz

Observing the WTO ministerial conference reminds me at times of sitting through a very bad theatre act. Attending a press conference of the EU first, and then one by the US was like watching an attempt of a blind man communicating with a deaf man, the former shouting in an attempt to get his message across to the deaf one, the latter using sign language in his attempt to reach the blind man. In WTO terms: The EU was saying 'beef', emphasising its willingness to allow more of the same in, speculating how many hamburgers their offer would translate into (depending how much beef is in one of those, haha), and the US saying cotton - and why aren't the Europeans playing ball?

Even more surreal: The topic of food aid - which is not a topic on the WTO agenda at all, but seems to have been introduced simply to distract the media and NGOs is cropping up almost every time one of the two major players speaks, and of course the view of the opposite side ('our good friends') is always wrong: Buying food in the region can kill more people, the US claims, than sending food. Sending milk powder to Africa is wrong and distorts local markets - say the other.

Absurdity reaches new levels when then one of those who started the topic points out that this is actually a minor topic compared to the real issues, i.e. trade liberalisation, and that African farmers would benefit much more if the cotton tariffs and subsidies were ended. "We (i.e. the US and the African cotton producers) must work together hard to convince the EU to move." Because according to a US spokesman the whole Doha development (! "We really must make this work for the poor all over the world!") round is held hostage by 'the other party' due to its failure to come up with 'bold proposals'. Apparently a couple trillion hamburgers are not count enough.

Cotton Farmer and U.S. Representatives      - M. Kunz

In the meantime time is filled by telling jokes, comparing the EU and US dispute to that of a couple ('though I am not sure they really want to marry') ... telling moving stories about the farmer in the EU who - thanks - to the ongoing but reformed payments of the Common Agricultural Policy can finally afford a holiday with his wife - unless he uses the money to purchase that new big combine harvester and produces even more ...

All of which might be slightly amusing, if it did not have a deadly side to it. As speaker after speaker from African countries, both government as well as cotton (and sugar and bananas) farmer representatives pointed out again and again: If it is not possible to use the rules of the WTO to force out cotton subsidies in the US (and tarifs there and elsewhere) - what is the point of a trading regime? If even US representatives admit that trade distortion in cotton exists ('though not as much as some people claim'), why do the 15 million people in Africa depending on cotton remain hostage to the 28.000 cotton farmers in the US. Even in the best of cases, i.e. if a deal is struck in Hong Kong, US Congress will have to approve it, and if that happens, chances are, it will only become effective years from now. And that best of cases seems rather unlikely. When asked about a noticeable hardening of positions between negotiators, a US spokeswoman joked that many key negotiators had not slept enough: "Folks are getting grumpy."

Memorial to Korean Framer - M. Kunz

Very funny. As a minister from Zambia pointed out: "People are dieing, now."

But that is probably not part of the WTO script, it seems, where it was agreed in July last year to deal 'expeditiously' with the cotton issue. Was this what Pascal Lamy meant when he pointed out in the opening ceremony that the WTO had come a long way from the times of GATT, where 'balanced' translated into 'all our demands have been met'?

The rules of the game? Perhaps negotiations should move to FIFA, which has, as Mr Lamy pointed out, a five times bigger budget than the WTO secretariat. The rules on the green seem quite fairer when compared to the 'green' negotiating room in the Hong Kong conference centre. As one African put it: The year, in which the Millennium Development Goals were repeatedly reaffirmed at various conferences, and a lot of rhetoric was devoted to the goal of making poverty history, the WTO seems to be 'making poverty the future'.

Martin Kunz serves on the Quaker United Nations Committee—Geneva and is at the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Conference as a member of the Quaker Office at the United Nations (QUNO) Geneva delegation. Although a member of Germany Yearly Meeting, he lives in London and runs a Fair Trade company.
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