WHY should a science magazine care about the arcane battles exercising the World Trade Organization? Because trade, and the rules that are now starting to govern it on a global scale, has an ever increasing impact on how our species uses the planet.
Trade profoundly affects the exploitation of resources and the distribution of technologies, their environmental impacts, and the ebb and flow of prosperity around the world 鈥� not to mention the political stability, or lack of it, that flows from that. Fully a quarter of the GDP of the US is now closely bound to international trade, up from 10 per cent in 1970. For some fast-growing economies of the developing world, the figure is higher.
In today鈥檚 world, nobody who seriously cares about issues from climate change to biotechnology can afford to profess bafflement or ennui over trade negotiations. Look at fisheries. 杏吧原创s have longed warned that subsidies for ever more powerful fishing boats are driving many of the world鈥檚 fleets to commit such outrages as the destruction of the cod off eastern Canada or in the North Sea. This, it turns out, is not only the resource equivalent of genocide 鈥� it isn鈥檛 even fair trade. Hence, the big guns of the WTO are this week being turned on fisheries subsidies (see 鈥淔isherman鈥檚 friend鈥�). It is the first time that what is primarily a conservation issue has been admitted as fair game for the world trade referees of Geneva. It may not be the last.
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Or take the most outrageous government subsidies of all, the billion dollars a day the US and the European Union give their farmers. Agricultural economists are divided over how things have got so out of hand. But without subsidies, crops from wheat to cotton would not be dumped on world markets at such low prices that farmers in countries without subsidies simply aren鈥檛 able to compete. In a landmark decision this week, the WTO declared that yes, actually, that is unfair (see 鈥淭alking 鈥檅out a revolution鈥�).
This is a welcome step forward. Using government handouts to hog ever more of the world market might impress a few big commodities companies enough so they鈥檒l support your election campaign 鈥� it is hard to see why else governments feel compelled to maintain such subsidies 鈥� but it makes little sense for anyone else. The environment suffers, technology is driven to produce ever-increasing yields regardless of whether anyone really wants the products, American and European consumers pay more for food, and contrary to myth even most of the farmers are not getting rich.
Flooding the world with sugar so massively subsidised that tropical sugar cane growers cannot compete is surely not the only way to keep Europe鈥檚 farmland from reverting to forest (although some extra forest might not be a bad idea). Nor can subsidising the cotton fields of Oklahoma so lavishly that they drive West African cotton growers into bankruptcy be the only 鈥� or even best 鈥� way of supplying US blue-jeans manufacturers.
The worst of the present system is that it rigs things to keep poor countries poor. Being mainly agrarian economies, they become prosperous only when their farmers make a bit of money, then plough that back into better farming 鈥� and education. That is how South Korea and Japan dragged themselves out of poverty. But as long as today鈥檚 poor farmers have to compete with the subsidised exports of the US and EU, Vietnam, Benin or Guatemala will never do a South Korea.
Of course, wealth brings new pressures. The more prosperous such countries become, the greater will be their carbon emissions. And developing countries that can suddenly compete in the global marketplace may wish to make the most of it by using up more of their own land and water growing food and cotton for export. But to turn such views into arguments for continuing the subsidies is tantamount to saying that poverty is good for the global environment and that the countries that got rich first somehow deserve to carry on taking an unfair share of the planet鈥檚 resources.
No one can look at the wars, refugees and terrorism that spring from today鈥檚 global divide between rich and poor and not want to spread the wealth more evenly. And the best way to do that is to arrange our global trading rules so that our irrevocably globalising economy becomes fair for everyone, not rigged for the rich.