Agriculture

Informal Note on WTO MC11, November 2017

WTO MC11: Issues at Stake for Developing Countries

This is an informal briefing note on all the pertinent issues to developing countries for the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference which will be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017.

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Policy Brief 44, August 2017

Industrialization, inequality and sustainability: What kind of industry policy do we need?

The 2030 Agenda includes as Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9) the commitment to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. The entry of this goal into the 2030 Agenda is an achievement for developing countries who have a very diverse situation in terms of population sizes, per capita incomes, economic sizes and structures, political systems, cultures but share the common feature of an underdeveloped industrial sector.Therefore, in order to implement SDG 9 pro-active industry policies are needed that take into account aspects of inequality and sustainability.

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Research Paper 75, March 2017

Implementing Farmers’ Rights Relating to Seeds

The concept of Farmers’ Rights recognized the role of farmers as custodians of biodiversity and helped to draw attention to the need to preserve practices that are essential for sustainable agriculture. This paper examines one particular aspect of such rights, perhaps the most controversial. It deals with the component of farmers’ rights referring to the use, exchange and sale of farm-saved seeds. Although that concept was initially introduced in 1989 with the aim of balancing the rights of farmers as breeders and of commercial plant breeders, a specific reference to the rights relating to seeds was only introduced upon the conclusion of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in 2001.

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South Centre Conference, 13 February 2017

Title:              Briefing for Developing Countries on Global Trends and Linkages to Geneva Multilateral    

                         Processes

Date:              Monday, 13 February 2017, 9:30-13:00

Venue:           Room XXIV, Palais des Nations

Organizer:   The South Centre

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Press release, 3 February 2017

Growing Coalition to Intensify Efforts to Address Global Antimicrobial Resistance

The South Centre supports increased global and national level advocacy for policy change and action to prevent the post-antibiotic era from becoming a bleak reality. This effort is being strengthened with the recent addition of five leading environmental and public health organizations to the Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC). The ARC is an independent coalition of members from six continents working in health, agriculture, consumer, and development sectors. (more…)

Analytical Note, January 2017

The WTO’s Special and Differential Treatment Negotiations (Paragraph 44)

Paragraph 44 of the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration mandates the ‘strengthening’ of Special and Differential Treatment (S&D) provisions in the WTO Agreement, and making them ‘more precise, effective and operational’. This Note tracks the evolution of these negotiations from the start of the Doha Round in 2001 until the Nairobi Ministerial in December 2015. (more…)

Analytical Note, January 2017

The WTO’s Agriculture Domestic Supports Negotiations

The historical problems in agriculture continue today. Developed countries with the financial capacity continue to subsidise their farmers and export these agricultural products. This has also been enabled by the Uruguay Round through large AMS entitlements for mostly developed countries ($19 billion for US and now about $95 billion for EU27), as well as the Green Box (Annex 2 of the Agreement on Agriculture). (more…)