en Espanol: El Legado de Iglesias y el Futuro del BID
The Iglesias Legacy and the IDB’s Future
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Food & Farm
The Limits of Cotton: White Gold Shows its Dark Side in Benin
According to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, it is an “extraordinary moment in history”i for Africa. World leaders have made a big step towards debt cancellation. If celebrity involvement is any indication, this is the largest upwelling of public concern in Europe and North America for African poverty in recent years.
Food Bully
The decision by the Bush administration to sue the European Union (EU) over its five-year moratorium on genetically modified (GM) foods has all the earmarks of a “shock and awe” campaign targeted at prying open a major potential market. But the suit before the World Trade Organization (WTO) may be aimed less at the EU than at developing nations, which are far more vulnerable to strong-arm tactics.
Protecting Agriculture: “Zero-Tolerance” on Farm Subsidies
Protecting Agriculture: “Zero-Tolerance” on Farm Subsidies By Devinder Sharma February 5, 2003
Sustainable Farming: Faulty Lessons From America
There isn’t a time when an educated Indian doesn’t search for answers from “America–the dream land” for the problems that crop up time and again back home. Whether it is hunger, sustainable agriculture, kick-starting industrial growth, food habits, music, or of course the successful model of economic growth, India must follow the Americans. No wonder, the intelligentsia, the economists, and the scientists are always desperate for opportunities to travel and return with a bag full of answers to our multitude of problems.
The World Food Summit: What Went Wrong?
Why do more than 800 million people still go hungry in a world marked by incredible affluence? 180 nations are gathering in Rome from June 10 to 13 to address just that question at the “World Food Summit: Five Years Later” meeting. At the 1996 World Food Summit, also held in Rome, 185 nations signed a commitment to cut the number of hungry people in half by 2015. There, Cuban President Fidel Castro made waves–echoing the feelings of many–when he called that goal “shameful” for its abandonment of any notion of eliminating hunger. Subsequent trends have been more shameful still.
Farm Bill Outrage Goes Global
The ink was hardly dry on the furious newspaper editorials inspired by the Bush administration’s decision to protect the steel industry when along comes the Farm Bill to further stoke the fire. The world is supposed to be moving toward more open markets, embracing liberalization as the route to globalization–and then the self-appointed leader of free trade abandons the script. These turnabouts couldn’t come at a worse time, as negotiations to deepen global trade rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO), just getting started in Geneva, will now begin with almost every country in the world expressing disgust with the U.S. retreat behind trade barriers.
Food Supremacy: America’s Other War
As the American and allied military forces continue to operate in Afghanistan, the world is increasingly getting dragged into yet another war–the war for food supremacy. And like the war against terrorism, the battle for food superiority is also going to be long drawn. With the battle lines already sketched and with the back-up support of international financial institutions, this war is being aggressively pursued on the trade front.
Globalization and Food Policy
I want to remind us that, even before September 11, we were heading toward a very militaristic world and police state, not only in the U.S. but globally. There have been recent revelations that the Bush administration was already planning on building up the antiterrorism campaign very intensively; and, at one of the street protests at Genoa, Italy, last year, a protestor was shot and killed by the police of Italy. So this is all part of a continuum. However, I would also agree that the movement is stronger than ever.
Intellectual Property Rights and the Privatization of Life
Key Points