The SAARC Network of Researchers on Global, Financial and Economic Issues at its Fourth Meeting held in New Delhi on 22-23 March 2001 decided to organize a three-day Regional Conference on Globalization and Agriculture: Challenges for South Asia in New Delhi. The Meeting strongly recommended that the SAARC-Japan Special Fund may be used for funding the Regional Conference. It requested Research and Information System for Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries (RIS), India and Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Sri Lanka to take the primary responsibility to organize the Conference for the Network and assigned them to prepare the proposal and submit it to the SAARC Secretariat for funding under the SAARC-Japan Special Fund. The Proposal submitted by RIS and IPS was subsequently approved for funding from the SAARC Japan Special Fund by the Twenty-seventh Session of the Standing Committee.

The Context and Objectives

The emerging WTO regime has many wide-ranging and pervasive implications for the agriculture sector of South Asian countries. The implementation of the provisions of WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) was expected to facilitate increased market access to agricultural exports of developing countries by restricting the agricultural subsidies given by the governments of industrialized countries. However, the actual experience of the past years suggests that agricultural subsidies in industrialized countries have actually increased rather than declining, in various forms such as decoupled income support, shifting of subsidies from one box to another using legal loopholes of the AoA (green, blue and amber boxes in AoA) etc.. OECD countries justify subsidies on the grounds of multifunctionality of agriculture (environmental improvement, landscaping, etc.). On the other hand, agricultural subsidies have considerably reduced in South Asian countries and are negative in countries like India. Thus the distortions in global agricultural trade still prevail and in such environment it becomes difficult for the South Asian agriculture to develop according to its natural comparative advantage. In fact, developing country share in world agricultural exports has stagnated at 40 per cent during the last five years.

The provisions of the AoA, in particular, liberalization of trade in agricultural commodities, have also raised concerns of the food security and food self-sufficiency in South Asian countries. Given the fact that agriculture provides the source of livelihood to the bulk of population in the region especially in the rural areas, there are many other issues that get linked up. For instance, empirical studies have shown that growth rate of agriculture has been a major factor in poverty alleviation and income distribution in the region. So development of agriculture sector has many other positive effects in poorer agrarian economies such as those in South Asia.

Furthermore, a number of other WTO Agreements have implications for the agriculture sector of South Asian countries. For instance, Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary measures (TBT & SPS) have started to affect exports of a number of primary products of South Asian countries adversely like food, beverages, fisheries, etc. South Asian countries need to pay attention to deal with these adverse effects with adoption of new international standards. They also have to deal with the emerging issues concerning the development of quarantine procedures, and evolve special regulations for entry of genetically modified foods, etc..

The provisions of TRIPs Agreement have implications for the access and availability of seeds of high yielding varieties of different crops and may have implications for the bio-diversity in the region. The South Asia region also is a major centre of origin of the rich genetic resources and flora and fauna besides vast amount of traditional knowledge. These resources are being commercially exploited by the western multinational companies without due recognition and compensation to the region. The recent patent disputes on basmati, neem, turmeric are but a few examples. The region has to evolve a policy to safeguard its genetic wealth and exploit it for its own advantage. The Convention on Biodiversity of the FAO recognizes farmers’ rights and provides for compensation for the commercial use of genetic heritage of countries. However, it has not been signed by some major industrialized countries such as the US. These issues are of vital importance to South Asian countries.

There has been a tendency in the recent trade negotiations to dilute the provisions of Article XVIII B of GATT that provides for special and differential treatment of developing countries. In the Uruguay Round Agreements the differential treatment provided to developing countries was reduced to only a longer transition period than that allowed to other countries for implementation.

The Conference proposes to discuss various issues and concerns of South Asian countries with respect to agriculture sector in a coherent framework to draw implications for the WTO negotiations. It will involve participation of different stakeholders such as government, industry, NGOs, and academia so that an informed debate on the issues involved takes place. The Conference is expected to prepare a set of recommendations that will help the SAARC countries to evolve a common position for the on-going WTO negotiations and the Fifth Ministerial Conference scheduled to be held in Cancun in September 2003.

The Conference is likely to address the following issues, among others,

The conference is expected to yield three types of outputs:

Participation

In order to give representation to policy makers, representatives of industry, academia and  NGOs, it is proposed to invite 18 participants/ paper presenters from the other SAARC countries (on average 3 participants from each of the 6 member countries), 2 representatives of the SAARC Secretariat, 5 outside Delhi participants from India besides Delhi based participants.

The Conference will be organized jointly by RIS (India) and IPS (Sri Lanka) for the SAARC Network of Researchers on Global Financial and Economic Issues. Collaboration will be sought with other research institutes located within the region for preparation of specific papers for the Conference.

RIS, India: Research and Information System for the Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries (RIS) is a New Delhi based autonomous policy research institution devoted to international economic issues and regional economic co-operation. It has done pioneering work on the regional economic cooperation in South Asia and on WTO issues in relation to the region. RIS has been nominated by the Government of India to be the National Focal Point for the SAARC Network of Researchers. RIS produces the South Asia Economic Journal, jointly with IPS. RIS also brings out periodic reports on South Asian development, the latest in the series being the South Asia Development and Co-operation Report 2001/02.

IPS, Sri Lanka: Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) is a Colombo based apex body of economic policy research in Sri Lanka. Its mission is to conduct independent, high quality research and analysis of medium   and long-term national policy issues in order to support and inform policy makers and to contribute to economic development. IPS is Sri Lanka’s national focal point for the SAARC Network and produces the South Asia Economic Journal jointly with RIS.

The conference will be jointly coordinated by Dr Nagesh Kumar, Deputy Director-General, RIS and Dr Saman Kelegama, Executive Director, IPS. Dr Kumar and Dr Kelegama also serve as the Co-editors of the South Asia Economic Journal where a selection of the papers from the conference will be published.