The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was set up in January 1995 to promote trade liberalisation which had been an agenda pursued by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

The efforts of the GATT/WTO in liberalising agricultural trade has helped to create a movement in the direction of the much fabled ?level playing field? in which producers can compete on equal terms. The theory is that those with the greatest comparative advantage will win and those with the least will fall by the wayside. This is excellent news, according to the theory, as those who do fall by the wayside will find new ways of making a living. In time everyone will end up doing what they do best and everything will be produced as efficiently and cheaply as possible, making us all better off. As Master Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide puts it so succinctly: 'everything [will be] for the best, in the best of possible worlds'. When the economists who espouse the theory check out their bank balances, they may well concur with Pangloss' rapturous assertion. The banana workers of the world might well have a different view however!

For in the real world, the key to comparative advantage is cutting costs, and the easiest way of doing this in the agricultural sector is by not paying workers enough to live on and by disregarding environmental impacts - in a nutshell, by externalising the social and environmental costs of production. In the process, the danger is that we will all end up in the worst of possible worlds.

Today many European consumers are well aware of this danger and a great many are only too happy to pay more for products which allow workers to be adequately paid and which keep environmental pollution to acceptable levels. Paradoxically in a world where the consumer is, we are told, 'King', it is still difficult to buy products which are sustainably produced rather than those which are simply produced cheaply. The rules of international trade, enshrined in the WTO articles, actually disallow discrimination on the basis of methods of production, so that countries, like the EU member states, who may wish to encourage sustainability in their trade relations are effectively barred from doing this through trade policy.

The EU Banana Import Regime

Challenges to the EU

Towards Liberalisation

Re-Launch Of WTO Negotiations - "Read more about the 'Call for Action on the Crisis in Agricultural Commodities' here.  The signatories of this common position are united in their concern about the serious crisis facing commodity dependent developing countries."

Websites

World Trade Organisation 

Bridges - Monthly Publication on Trade and Sustainable Development - includes details of Dispute Settlement (eng, fr, esp)

Third World Network - lots of articles, analysis and comment