DEVELOPMENT-LATAM: The North Must Compensate for Protectionism

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 19 2002 (IPS) - The Latin American delegations to the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, which opens this month in South Africa, will insist that the industrialised North eliminate barriers to exports from the developing South, or compensate for those obstacles with development aid.

“Latin America is totally united around that demand, which is crucial,” Raúl Estrada Oyuela, director of environmental affairs at Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, told IPS.

“We need financial support for sustainable development, because the distortions in trade deprive us of the resources that we should be assigning to that purpose,” said the official, who is a delegate to the “group of friends” of the conference Chair, an informal group convened by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to iron out differences in the plan of action to be adopted.

According to statistics of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the funds that the European Union assigns to official development aid are equivalent to one-fifth of what that bloc, the United States and Japan spend annually on farm subsidies.

“Despite the promises, these subsidies remain in place, and heavily distort international trade,” stressed Estrada Oyuela.

He admitted, however, that hopes for progress at the conference “should be toned down if we want to avoid frustration.”

“For starters, our hope is to consolidate the achievements of the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Doha regarding trade policy, and the commitments assumed at the International Conference on Financing and Development in Monterrey in terms of development aid,” he pointed out.

The coming conference, to be held Aug 26-Sep 4 in the South African city of Johannesburg, will assess progress made towards the targets set at the 1992 Earth Summit, and towards the creation of a development model that neither destroys the environment nor compromises the livelihood and resources of future generations.

But many participants fear that the gathering will be a fiasco due to stand-offs between rich and poor countries on fundamental issues.

Although agreement has been reached on more than 70 percent of the questions covered by the draft action plan, controversy continues to surround the most important issues, which remain in brackets.

Annan and South African President Thabo Mbeki called together the “group of friends” in July, comprised of delegates from 26 countries, who met in an informal session at United Nations headquarters in New York. However, the meeting did not make any major advances.

The group will continue holding discussions, in search of a consensus on the action plan, until the conference gets underway.

But non-governmental organisations in Latin America “are not overly optimistic,” due to the failure to move forward on questions that Estrada Oyuela described as essential, local activist Liliana Isas, with the Universal Ecological Foundation, told IPS.

“The chapter on development aid remains in brackets, which means everything is up for discussion. No one commits to financing sustainable development in poor countries, and the same thing is true with the chapter on concrete commitments, where everything is bracketed,” she said.

Independent organisations in Latin America plan to meet on the eve of the conference to draft paragraphs that could replace the bracketed clauses in the final draft of the action plan, based on a minimum level of agreement, in order to keep the meeting from becoming a total failure.

Latin America and the Caribbean will only take to Johannesburg one proposal for a binding target: raising global consumption of energy from clean alternative sources from the current two percent to 10 percent by 2010.

Demands for truly free trade without barriers and for greater assistance to the fight against poverty are the most frequently reiterated aspects of the draft action plan drawn up for Johannesburg by the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“We reject all principles or policies that distort international trade, and we are demanding the elimination of all forms of export subsidies, to improve market access and reduce – with a view to eliminating – national supports that distort trade and production,” states the regional document.

Although the countries of Latin America have made progress towards the creation of a setting that is favourable to technology transfer, industrialised nations have failed to adopt effective measures to guarantee that transfer, especially in the area of appropriate technologies for sustainable development.

“Extreme poverty, environmental degradation, underdevelopment and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, as well as unequal distribution of wealth affect, all countries in the international community, especially developing countries,” the declaration adds.

The document recognises that in the decade since the Earth Summit, “significant advances” have been made in terms of increasing public awareness in the region on environmental issues.

“However, 10 years on, the conditions for sustainable development are no better than the conditions that were present in 1992,” it adds.

Industrialised nations must earmark “sufficient resources” to ensure compliance with the commitments assumed, such as the pledge to assign 0.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to official development aid.

The globalisation process does not necessarily move in the direction of sustainable development, the document points out.

Governments from this region will call on the international community to avoid inequalities, such as the economic difficulties that many Latin American and other poor countries have faced with regards to taking part in the pre-summit preparatory process, which had negative effects for the region in the negotiations.