Japan's 'no' to the draft Cancun Ministerial Text

Developing nations of the world, including Bangladesh, have already expressed concern that the talks at Cancun are destined to favour the rich and the powerful, and also made it clear that they suspect that the United States and the European Union are going to use the negotiations as a pretext to help their agro industrial sector break into the economies of the backward nations, resulting in severe consequences as agriculture provides the main support for absorbing the bulk of the workforce in those countries. For quite sometime, they were suspicious too about the motives of Japan, which they thought was poised to join the powerful western lobby in exploiting the weak economic strength of the developing countries. But Japan now seems to have come out of its earlier position of helping the Western block stretching its long hands well beyond the industrial sectors of each and every country, although the main reason for this changing Japanese approach has less to do with country's sympathetic approach towards the position of the developing world. The Japanese leadership is under strong pressure from the farming lobby to take necessary step to protect the interest of farmers who feel threatened that bringing down all barriers on trade in farm products and reducing tariffs will have a serious consequence on country's agriculture.

Although a broad range of subjects like drugs and intellectual property, textiles and fare competition in international trade are to be discussed at Cancun meeting, issues related to agriculture and trade on farm products are considered to be crucial for the developing countries as well as for Japan. In the developing world most people live in the rural sector and are involved in someway or other with farming. In agrarian societies that most of the developing countries represent, agriculture provides the vital link for the sustenance of social structures that have been in place from time immemorial. Hence, maintaining that rural form of life and social behaviour is crucial for the very survival of such societies, many of which now feel threatened that paving the way for the rich to penetrate that part of their private life in the name of trade liberalisation could only lead to a new cycle of poverty and suffering. This, they also argue, is bound to lead to an unprecedented uneven competition where the disadvantaged farming sector of the poor can have no match to that of the subsidy inflated agro industries of the West.

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Farm subsidies in advanced countries of the West, for example, exceed the total per capita income of many poor nations. The $4 billion cotton subsidies that the United States annually provides to 25,000 well-off farmers bring misery to 10 million Africans involved in cotton farming. Bringing down all trade barriers in those countries to introduce a free market system so that American cotton can penetrate the market without any obstacle would easily destroy whatever remains of the already cornered cotton farming in Africa and thus making the societies dependent on imports from outside, which would no doubt give further boost to the already very high unemployment rate back at home. The amount of subsidy that every European cow is enjoying amounts to $2.50 a day or roughly $880 per year, which is more than double the amount of per capita income in Bangladesh. There is no shortage of such equations to prove the vulnerability that the backward nations are now facing in a competitive world of liberal trade practices where their competitiveness has no match to that of the advanced countries.

The position of Japan, on the other hand, is not that disadvantageous as that of the developing world. But even so, Japan has already expressed concern about the blueprint that has been drafted last month at a meeting in Geneva to help the stalled global trade talks make a fresh start at Cancun. As the negotiating parties at the Geneva meeting failed to reach an agreement on issues ranging from farm subsidies to tariffs on industrial and farm products, the chairman of the meeting, Uruguayan Ambassador Carlos Perez de Castillo, with the backing form the WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi, drafted the Cancun ministerial text to give the talks a boost.

Japan claims that the draft gives preferential treatment to big farm exporting countries and hence presents many problems. Speaking at a press conference earlier this week in Tokyo, Japan's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei made it clear that at the meeting in Cancun he intends to press strongly for revisions to the text.

According to the Japanese minister, as agriculture provides a function the scope of which goes much beyond the narrow understanding of trade, Japan strongly supports the concept of the coexistence of various types of agriculture. Based on that principle, Japan is willing to propose modalities that have flexibility among products, capable of continuing policy reforms, and are well balanced between exporting and importing countries. He also expressed concern that the pressure being created by the United States and some other advanced countries to wave the barriers in trade in agro products would jeopardise the survival of many developing countries and disrupt the normally practiced lifestyle of many other countries including Japan. A situation where only a handful of countries will control agriculture while in most others the agrarian bases tracing back to thousands of years will be destroyed is, according to Kamei, not a welcoming idea at all.

He reminded the press that agriculture has always played diversified roles in different societies and that need is yet to be overturned just to facilitate free market trading practices. The green rice paddies that cover Japanese countryside, for example, prevent flooding and serve to preserve water naturally in addition to providing a staple for the dining table. Destroying that farming culture by allowing cheap imported products to compete freely in country's market would have a serious consequence on the surrounding environment as well as on healthy social practices that has proven far more effective in solving various needs of the society, he said. This multiple function of agriculture, according to Kamei, has not been explained properly in the Draft WTO ministerial text.

Agriculture also has a function to ensure safe food supply, not only simply to ensure ample supply. This important aspect of farming too should have its reflection on any document dealing with agriculture and farm products, he said. Moreover, as for many developing countries agriculture forms the foundation of the society, Japan, according to country's agriculture minister, would call for a flexible approach so that their already disadvantaged position does not deteriorate further.

There is a no doubt secret negotiation, arm-twisting and simple display of raw economic power by the rich will once again find their way in Cancun to make sure that the interests of the powerful are protected. Only a firm united stand by the developing countries can make things different. And as they now have an unexpected supporter from the rich group like Japan, Cancun most likely would provide a better chance to achieve a fairer global trading system that they are hoping for.