Sustainable populations and joined-up thinking

What I like about the Simultaneous Policy approach is that it promotes up joined-up thinking, in a way that current global policy making does not, as evidenced by our leaders efforts to tackle climate change, while increasing oil production or refusing to listen to the concerns of farmers in developing countries at the World Trade Organisation, while there is evidence that forcing open developing country markets has impoverished farmers and increased food insecurity in some countries (see past blogs).

Since starting this blog and thinking in a little more depth of the possibilities of the Simultaneous policy, there seem to be a multiplicity of ways that different global problems can be tackled in a coherent way.

Sustainability, population growth and protecting the right to food came together for me this week, re-reading Michael Latham's chapter in Global Obligations for the Right to Food about tackling the curse of worms, measles and malaria. Professor Latham recommends governments to take a Resolution to the World Health Assembly calling for a strategic program for tackling these three illnesses. This could be worth proposing for inclusion in the Simultaneous Policy.

Here's how some issues were joining up for me this week. I read that in Brazil, the birth rate has fallen to 1.8 children per woman, a level similar to that in industrialized countries. This level was not anticipated by the Brazilian National Institute of Geography and Statistics until 2043. The rapid drop is attributed to urbanization, where more children cost more money, in contrast to the countryside where historically more children have been seen as more hands to tend the land. But the rate has fallen in rural areas as quickly as in cities, attributed to the success in promoting family planning and the rising living standards experienced, or aspired to.

The expectation is that Brazilian's population will stabilise around 290 million inhabitants in 2050. The population if growth was at the rate of 1991, would be 377 million. With the rate of 1970, it would be 623 million.

If the average Brazilian was to increase their demand on the land to 4.1 hectares per person (the same as in Switzerland), then a population of 220 million could be supported. With present consumption levels, Brazil could support 384 millions. This is based on a study by the World Wide Fund for nature. All the above statistics are drawn from Brazil's news weekly, Veja, whose 30 July issue led with the cover story: "Where are all the babies?"

So achieving a sustainable population is within easy reach for Brazil, somewhere around the 220 - 290 million mark.

Sometimes in my work campaigning against the aggressive marketing of baby foods, practices which contribute to the unnecessary death and suffering of babies in conditions of poverty and compromises development elsewhere, I come across people who suggest that it is better that babies are dying in poor countries to limit population growth. Really. That's how some people think.

But the fact is that populations stabilise when parents have the expectation their babies will survive and outlive them. It is in conditions with high infant and young child mortality that birth rates tend to be higher. Rising standards of living also reduce birth rates as people are both more educated and raising children is more expensive. Parents choose to focus resources on a fewer number.

In the interests of sustainability for the global human population - and our lives on this planet are inextricably linked - reducing childhood mortality rates and raising standards of living benefits us all.

Michael Latham, like the rest of us who contributed chapters to Global Obligations for the Right to Food, makes the case that governments have obligations under existing human rights conventions to take collective action to deliver and protect the right to food. Promoting, protecting and supporting breastfeeding is part of the measures he highlights for improving child short and long-term health.

He also argues that relieving hunger encompasses relieving malnutrition and that is achieved not only by providing more food, but ending endemic parasites and illnesses that compromise nutrition.

I don't want to reiterate everything that is in his chapter - you really should buy the book - but the three principal concerns (worms, measles and malaria) are embarrassingly cheap to address. Embarrassing, because governments with the resources are failing to do so. They are not only failing in their human rights and moral obligations, they are, in some respects, costing themselves unnecessary expenditure.

Worms, parasites in the intestines that may affect organs such as the lungs, infect probably 2 billion people. Cambodia's de-worming programme cost US$ 0.06 per child.

There are about 50 million cases of measles every year, with about 1 million deaths. Immunization can have significant impact. "Six southern African countries that recorded 60,000 measles cases in 1996 reduced this to 117 cases in 2000". While national governments should be taking this action, where they cannot, the support of the international community is vital, argues Professor Latham, and will save them money if a concerted global campaign wipes out measles.

He writes: "It cost the United States US$ 124 million a year to keep itself free of smallpox for the twenty-five years prior to when smallpox was eradicated in 1978. Thus the US$32 million that the United States invested in the global Smallpox Eradication Program was recouped in about three months once smallpox vaccinations could be discontinued."

It is estimated that there are 1200 million cases of malaria every year, resulting in 1.5 million deaths annually. Impregnated bed nets are seen as an effective way to greatly reduce this toll. A net costs typically just US$ 3, but many people in poor countries cannot afford them. Malaria is so widespread that its impact is far greater than that counted in deaths. Lost schools days, days off work and unmet potential are also a blight.

Governments have signed up to the human rights instruments, that include the right to health as well as the right to food, and the Millenium Development Goals, but are failing to meet the obligations that arise from these.

A joined up approach would suggest serious and concerted effort to tackle worms, measles and malaria is a worthy candidate for inclusion in the Simultaneous Policy as it will not only address the injustice of people on our planet suffering from preventable illness, but will help reduce costs for all people and lead to lower mortality rates and smaller families and towards sustainable populations.

Join the discussion in the Simpol Forum at:
http://www.simpol.org.uk/forum/

Sign up as a Simultaneous Policy Adopter to vote on suggestions and put forward your own. Call on your political representatives to pledge to implement the Simultaneous Policy alongside other governments.

WTO and the danger of compartalised thinking

The World Trade Organisation negotiations have collapsed after China and India took the view that no deal was better than a bad deal and the US wouldn't budge. It was billed as the 'development round', where issues such as rich countries dumping cut price goods on developing countries while shutting those countries out of their own markets were to be addressed. But, in the view of the developing countries - most of whom were shut out of the Green Room where negotiations took place - the rich world was more intent on gaining further access to their markets.

The Guardian reports:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/30/wto.india

---extract begins
The US trade representative, Susan Schwab, said it was "unconscionable" that developing countries were insisting on shielding their farmers. "In the face of the food price crisis, it's ironic that the debate came down to how much and how fast could nations raise their barriers to imports of food."

Kamal Nath, India's trade minister, said he was representing the position of all the G33 members, who were "concerned about the livelihood of poor and subsistence farmers", and said he hoped the talks could eventually be revived.
---extract ends

Demonstrators in India were against a deal on opening their country to food imports. Developing countries have good reason to be wary. Case studies have shown what sometimes happens when developing countries are forced to open their markets. In Haiti tariffs on rice were cut from 50% to 3% and Christian Aid reports that Haiti has gone from being self-sufficient in food to using 80 per cent of its export earnings to pay for food imports. Rice production has fallen by almost half, and three-quarters of the rice consumed comes from the US. See The Guardian via:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/07/cambodia-haiti-food-security.html

That countries put their own best interests first - even if these means avoiding their human rights obligations - is not surprising. But governments are accused of following the demands of lobbyists rather than the greater good of their citizens as a whole, let alone the wider world.

The Simultaneous Policy approach has two great advantages over the 7 years of negotiations that failed this week.

Firstly, it encourages joined up thinking. Why is international trade - the movement of goods around the world - being discussed separately to climate change? A system that included the cost of pollution would encourage local production, processing and consumption, while items that need to be transported (such as agricultural goods from tropical countries) would still be economic - and sustainable - to transport.

Secondly, it encourages people around the world to participate in the policy development process. Certainly US farmers - and agrobusiness - who are subsidised to export their soya, cotton, corn and rice below cost price are likely to oppose measures that could have a negative impact on them. Those affected are welcome to sign up as Simultaneous Policy Adopters to make their case, but it has to be made transparently and it is for other Adopters to decide whether to accept their alternative suggestions or not. It provides a way for US citizens as a whole to reclaim their sovereignty. Farmers in India and Haiti have equal right to put forward their proposals.

For discussions that are already underway see the Simultaneous Policy Forum.

Shut out of the WTO Green Room

The open letter below from Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) proves the point that current methods of global policy making are not based on winning the argument, but on abusing power. At the current discussions on the so-called development round of the WTO, the rich nations are arm-twisting poorer countries to open their markets to transnational corporations, while offering lesser access to their own markets.

In previous meetings the developing country block was organised and united enough to say that no deal is better than a poor deal, and the same may happen again. Yet the world is in need of a better regulated system of trade as the credit crunch, out of control oil prices and rising food prices are all blamed in part on predatory speculation. As I wrote yesterday, policies persued by WTO, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are also implicated in the food crisis. See:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/07/cambodia-haiti-food-security.html

But can we expect anything different? Nations compete with each other and protect their own best interests, particularly their economies. Those with power use it. While President Morales is calling for a different agenda to be followed, there are those who argue that Bolivia should instead concentrate on becoming more effective at competing. Brazil - which has many natural advantages over Bolivia - is achieving both increases in standards of living and reduction in inequality by embracing globalization. President Lula, one-time trade union activist, dropped his radical policies to get elected. See:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/brazil-success-lula-light.html

The Simultaneous Policy campaign is bringing people together around the world to discuss the policies they wish to see implemented to address global problems. You can join in by signing up as an SP Adopter on the Simpol websites. You can see policy suggestions already under discussion in the Simpol Forum. The campaign offers the chance of a coherent set of policies, for example, where climate change, sustainability and trade justice are addressed together, instead of being at odds with each other. This is one big plus, and is founded on the belief that simultaneous implementation of these policies will break through the destructive competition between nations.

Our leaders at present are forced into many decisions (or lack of them) because they are told by business leaders that investment and jobs will otherwise leave the country. Countries are played off against each other to offer the most attractive location for companies to operate and to host their headquarters. Hence, the type of behaviour at WTO described by President Morales.

John Bunzl has described the policy development process as a parallel market in ideas. There is the market where countries compete for investment and global justice campaigners are limited to winning what concessions they can. And there is the Simultaneous Policy market where we can discuss the policies that are really necessary. He has described this in an analogy of kids fighting over sandwiches, which you can read here:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/sp-analogy.html

President Morales has suggestions for alternative policies. If Adopters want to support them within the Simultaneous Policy campaign then they are welcome to put them forward. But they will need to be defended. To survive voting rounds to be included in the final policy package, the argument must be won on its merits.

---Letter from Evo Morales, reproduced on many sites, including:
http://www.art-us.org/node/360

Letter from Evo Morales to the WTO

On the WTO's round of negotiations

International trade can play a major role in the promotion of economic development and the alleviation of poverty. We recognize the need for all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities and welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates. The majority of WTO members are developing countries. We seek to place their needs and interests at the heart of the Work Programme adopted in this Declaration. Doha World Trade Organization Ministerial Declaration, November 14, 2001

With these words began the WTO round of negotiations seven years ago. In reality, are economic development, the alleviation of poverty, the needs of all our peoples, the increased opportunities for developing countries at the center of the current negotiations at the WTO?

First I must say that if it were so, all 153 member countries and in particular, the wide majority of developing countries should be the main actors in the WTO negotiations. But what we are seeing is that a handful of 35 countries are invited by the Director-General to informal meetings so that they advance significantly in the negotiations and prepare the agreements of this WTO "Development Round".

The WTO negotiations have turned into a fight by developed countries to open markets in developing countries to favor their big companies.

The agricultural subsidies in the North, which mainly go to agricultural and food companies in the US and Europe, will not only continue but will actually increase, as demonstrated by the 2008 Farm Bill [1] in the United States. The developing countries will lower tariffs on their agricultural products while the real subsidies [2] applied by the US or the EU to their agricultural products will not decline.

As for industrial products in the WTO negotiations, developing countries are being asked to cut their tariffs by 40% to 60% while developed countries will, on average, cut their tariffs by 25% to 33%.

For countries like Bolivia the erosion of trade preferences due to the overall lowering of tariffs will have negative effects on the competitiveness of our exports.

The recognition of asymmetries, and the real and effective special and differential treatment in favor of developing countries is limited and obstructed when implemented by developed countries.

In the negotiations, there is a push towards the liberalization of new services sectors by countries when we should be definitely excluding basic services in education, health, water, energy and telecommunications from the text of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services. These services are human rights that cannot be objects of private commercial relations and of liberalization rules that lead to privatization.

The deregulation and privatization of financial services, among others, are the cause of the current global financial crisis. Further liberalization of services will not bring about more development, but greater probabilities for a crisis and speculation on vital matters such as food.

The intellectual property regime established by the WTO has most of all benefited transnational corporations that monopolize patents, thus making medicines and other vital products more expensive, promoting the privatization and commercialization of life itself, as evidenced by the various patents on plants, animals and even human genes.

The poorest countries will be the main losers. The economic projections of a potential WTO agreement, carried out even by the World Bank, [3] indicate that the cumulative costs of the loss in employment, the restrictions to national policymaking and the loss in tariff revenues will be greater than the "gains" from the "Development Round".

After seven years, the WTO round is anchored in the past and out of date with the most important phenomena we are currently living: the food crisis, the energy crisis, climate change and the elimination of cultural diversity. The world is being led to believe that an agreement is needed to resolve the global agenda and this agreement does not correspond to that reality. Its bases are not appropriate to resist this new global agenda.

Studies by the FAO point out that with the current forces of agricultural production it is possible to feed 12 billion human beings, in other words, almost more than double the current world population. However, there is a food crisis because production is not geared towards the well-being of humans but towards the market, speculation and profitability of the big producers and marketers of food. To deal with the food crisis, it is necessary to strengthen family, peasant and community agriculture. Developing countries have to recover the right to regulate [4] our imports and exports to guarantee our populations' food supply. We have to end consumerism, waste and luxuries. In the poorest part of the planet, millions of human beings die of hunger every year. In the richest part of the planet, millions of dollars are spent to combat obesity. We consume in excess, waste natural resources and we produce the waste that pollutes Mother Earth.

Countries should prioritize the consumption of what we produce locally. A product that travels half around the world to reach its destiny can be cheaper than other that is produced domestically, but, if we take into account the environmental costs of transporting that merchandise, the energy consumption and the quantity of carbon emissions that it generates, then we can reach the conclusion that it is healthier for the planet and for humanity to prioritize the consumption of what is produced locally.

Foreign trade must be a complement to local production. In no way can we favor foreign markets at the expense of national production.

Capitalism wants to make us all uniform so that we turn into mere consumers. For the North there is only one development model, theirs. The uniform models of economic development are accompanied by processes of generalized acculturation to impose on us one single culture, one single fashion, one single way of thinking and of seeing things. To destroy a culture, to threaten the identity of a people, is the greatest damage that can be done to humanity.

The respect and the peaceful and harmonic complementarity of the various cultures and economies is essential to save the planet, humanity and life.

For this to be in fact, a round of negotiations about development and anchored in the present and future of humanity and the planet it should:

• Guarantee the participation of developing countries in all WTO meetings, thus ending exclusive meetings in the "green room". [5]

• Implement true asymmetric negotiations in favor of developing countries in which the developed countries make effective concessions.

• Respect the interests of developing countries without limiting their capacity to define and implement national policies in agriculture, industry and services.

• Effectively reduce the protectionist measures and subsidies of developed countries. [6]

• Insure that the right of developing countries to protect their infant industries, for as long as necessary, in the same manner that industrialized countries did in the past.

Guarantee the right of developing countries to regulate and define their policies in the services sector, explicitly excluding basic services from the General Agreement on Trade in Services of the WTO.

• Limit the monopolies of large corporations on intellectual property, foster the transfer of technology and prohibit the patenting of all forms of life.

• Guarantee the countries' food sovereignty, eliminating any limitation to the ability of the States to regulate food exports and imports.

• Adopt measures that contribute to limit consumerism, the wasting of natural resources, the elimination of greenhouse gases and the creation of waste that harms Mother Earth.

In the 21^st century, a "Development round" can no longer be about "free trade", but it rather has to promote a kind of trade that contributes to the equilibrium between countries, regions and mother nature, establishing indicators that allow for an evaluation and correction of trade rules in terms of sustainable development.

We, the governments, have an enormous responsibility with our peoples. Agreements such as the ones in the WTO have to be widely known and debated by all citizens and not only by ministers, businessmen and "experts". We, the peoples of the world, have to stop being passive victims of these negotiations and turn into main actors of our present and future.

Evo Morales Ayma

Presidente of Bolivia

---

[1] The 2008 Farm Bill was approved on May 22 by the US Congress. It authorizes spending that includes subsidies to agriculture of up to 307 billion dollars in 5 years. Of these, there will be approximately 208 billion dollars that can be spent on food programs.

[2] The current text in Agriculture proposes the reduction of US subsidies by a range between 13 and 16.4 billion dollars per year. However, the real subsidies that will actually apply to the US are of approximately 7 billion dollars per year. On the other hand, the European Union is offering in the WTO negotiations the reform it carried out in 2003 to its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), without proposing further opening.

[3] Developing countries have little to gain in the WTO Round: the projected gains are of 0.2% for these countries, the reduction in world poverty is of 2.5 million (less than 1% of the world's poor) and the losses due to forgone tariff revenues will be of at least 63 billion dollars. (Anderson, Martin, and van der Mensbrugghe, "Market and Welfare Implications of Doha Reform Scenarios," in Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda, Anderson and Martin, World Bank in Back to the Drawing Board: No Basis for Concluding the Doha Round of Negotiations" by Kevin P. Gallagher and Timothy A. Wise, RIS Policy Brief #36).

[4] This regulation must include the right to implement taxes on exports, to lower tariffs to favor imports, ban exports, subsidize domestic production, establish price bands, and in short, any measure that, given each developing country's reality, better suits the purpose of guaranteeing the population's food supply.

[5] The green room meetings is the name of the informal negotiation meetings at the WTO in which a group of 35 countries selected by the Director-General participates.

[6] A real cut in agricultural subsidies in the US would have to reduce them to less than 7 billion dollars per year.