WTO-CANCUN: Consumers Begin to Make Themselves Heard

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Aug 22 2003 (IPS) - Consumer groups are beginning to lobby governments around the world to have their voices heard at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun next month.

A lobbying day in several Latin American countries last week is being followed up by campaigns in several other countries. London-based Consumers International (CI) is heading the campaign. With 250 members in 115 countries, CI is the leading international network of consumer organisations.

Issues arising from agriculture are inevitably at the heart of what the groups are telling the governments, and increasingly also officials with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva where negotiations are being held to prepare for Cancun.

"Everyone is well familiar with what the problems are," CI chairman Julian Edwards told IPS. "The agricultural subsidies in developed countries are a scandal, both for developed countries and for developing countries." The challenge over the next few weeks, he says, is to find ways to oppose them effectively.

CI is working with several leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from around the world with similar concerns. It is working also to draw greater attention to the price that people in developed countries are paying. "Only 2 percent of the population of the European Union is employed in agriculture, yet 50 percent of the EU budget is spent on support for agriculture," Edwards says.

"When you talk subsidies, you are really talking about consumers paying a huge amount of money as taxpayers," says Philip Evans from the Consumers Association UK which is backing the CI campaign at Cancun. "Add to that the higher prices they pay then for the food they buy."

The consumer campaign has become effective enough for Evans and others from consumer watchdog groups to be included in the official British delegation at Cancun. "As a part of the official delegation, we can make sure our voice is heard as the negotiations take place," he says.

Negotiations on agricultural policy so far have mostly emphasised the producers. "But if cotton growers in West Africa can compete fairly with cotton producers enjoying huge subsidies in the U.S., it is likely to bring prices down, and consumers can have a wider choice of goods," says Kaye Stearman from CI.

"In developing countries producers can earn more from export, and the income can then be spent on local goods, so consumers gain from better prices, growing economies and greater choice," she says.

The CI campaign so far has taken some spectacular forms. In Peru members of the Asociación Peruana de Consumidores y Usuarios (ASPEC) and other social activists marched through the streets of Lima to government offices pushing a giant sphere representing the planet Earth, accompanied by protestors dressed in traditional Latin American countries to symbolise the gap in market power between the North and the South.

In Argentina, two CI members, the Unión de Usuarios y Consumidores (UUC) and Consumidores Argentinos, held a forum with the participation of representatives of the Subsecretaría de Defensa de la Competencia y del Consumidor (the government consumer protection agency) and others. In Brazil, the Instituto de Defensa del Consumidor (IDEC) is conducting diverse lobbying activities in Brasilia before authorities.

In India the Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) has held a series of major events in Jaipur in north India to lobby the government. The Indian government is in the forefront of developing countries opposing the recently revealed EU-U.S. plan on agriculture. In Pakistan groups have been lobbying the government to hold firm in defence of consumer rights.

Such concerns will be taken up together at Cancun. "We will have 20 representatives at Cancun," says Edwards. "We will be meeting daily to lobby government delegations and WTO officials."

The EU-U.S. proposal will be an immediate target. "This is no more than a statement of good intentions," Edwards says. "There are no specific proposals for reduction in levels of quota systems, or in the level of subsidies."

The CI says progress on this issue will be "a litmus test of whether the world’s economic powers are prepared to make the so-called Doha Development Agenda more than a media sound bite and turn it into a practical reality."

The EU-U.S. declaration is "a serious reversal of the Doha declaration where a commitment was given to eliminate all export subsidies," the CI says. "Restricting removal to a limited number of products ‘of particular interest to the developing countries’ violates the letter of the 2001 Doha ministerial statement."

This approach will mean that tariff peaks in the EU and the U.S. for highly protected sectors like sugar, beef and dairy products will not be addressed, and that the burden of reform – and therefore market access concessions – will fall on the developing countries, the CI says.

The WTO meeting will be the second ministerial meeting of the present so-called Doha round of trade negotiations that began in the Qatar capital Doha in 2001.