http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=603
See this same article
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0909-06.htm
Published on Tuesday, September 9, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
The Myth of Localism
Whose Side Are You
On?
Some of those calling
for changes in the way we trade are working
against the interests of the poor. This is the second of a three-part
series on trade.
By George Monbiot.
Published in the Guardian 9th September 2003
Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun in Mexico tomorrow,
two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between
the
campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates
demanding
unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within
the
ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor.
The problem all those
who want a fairer deal face is that there has
seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor
which does not amount to legalised theft. The draft agreement
the
members of the World Trade Organisation will discuss this week
is no exception. While it permits the rich nations to continue
protecting their markets, it seeks to force the poor nations
to open their economies to several novel forms of institutional
piracy.
Yet the poorer countries
desperately want an effective trade treaty.
Their negotiators know that the rich world is trying to rob them,
and they are loathe to approve an agreement which allows its corporations
to run off with everything but their kidneys (that comes later).
But they are also aware that both the US and the European Union
appear to be doing all they can to force them to walk out. As
any
trades unionist knows, when the poor cannot bargain collectively,
the rich can impose whatever rules they please.
The response of some
of those in the rich world who are disgusted
with their governments' proposals is to suggest that poor nations
should withdraw from most kinds of international trade. But this
introduces another problem. The poor countries need money and,
in particular, hard money. They have few means of obtaining it.
Piracy worked well for the nations which are rich today, but
the poor are in no position to reciprocate. Aid locks its
recipients into patronage and dependency. The only remaining
option appears to be trade. The three million people from the
poorer nations who have so far signed Oxfam's petition are
calling not to "make trade go away", but to "make
trade fair".
And this is where they part company from some of those who claim
to support them.
Few people in the rich
world now admit that they wish drastically
to reduce the value of exports from the poor nations, but several
prominent campaigners are promoting policies which lead to this
outcome. When, in June, I suggested that "localisation"
(the proposal
that everything which can be produced locally should be produced
locally) would damage the interests of poorer nations, Dr Spencer
Fitz-Gibbon, the press officer of the Green Party, sent me a
furious letter of complaint.1 Localisation, he insisted,
would help the poor by permitting them to be self-reliant
and by reducing trade's contribution to climate change.
"We are advocating a world of relatively balanced, relatively
self-reliant economies. That ultimately means the poorer
country manufacturing its own frying pans and computers
and pencils". It sounds sensible and obvious, until you
take a moment to examine the implications.
If every country is
to manufacture its own frying pans and
computers and pencils, then every country would require bauxite,
iron ore, copper, silicon, feedstock, graphite, softwood and
all the other raw materials required for their manufacture.
If the country does not possess them, it must import them.
Because raw materials are heavier, importing raw materials
rather than finished products means that more fossil fuel
must be used in transport. "Self-reliance" of this kind
thus
increases, rather than reduces, trade's contribution to climate
change.
Just as dangerously,
while self-reliance may be feasible for the
richer nations, most of the poorer countries simply do not possess
a domestic market of sufficient size to make the manufacturing
of
complex products worthwhile. Suggest to an Ethiopian economist
that
her nation should have a computing industry of its own, serving
only its own market, and she would laugh in your face. Because
the market is small, as the Ethiopians are poor, each computer
would cost many times as much as those produced in the rich world.
Their comparative purchasing power would then become even weaker,
and the technology they wanted would fall still further out of
reach. If Ethiopian businesses, hospitals and universities were
to be viable, they would have to import their computers from
abroad, as they do today.
For this they would
require foreign exchange. But, under the
Green Party's system, they would find it even harder to obtain
than they do at present, for the rich world will also have been
striving for (and will be far likelier to obtain) self-reliance
in manufacturing. The blindingly obvious result is that the
only products the poor countries can then sell to the rich
ones are raw materials. I put these points to Dr Fitz-Gibbon
two months ago. I have yet to receive a response.
Global justice surely
requires that the people of the rich world,
whatever their governments might want, campaign to help the poor
nations reclaim as much of our ill-gotten wealth as possible.
Just policies have been proposed by groups such as Oxfam, Christian
Aid and the World Development Movement, which call, for example,
for the democratisation of the World Trade Organisation; an agreement
which permits the poorest countries to defend their infant export
industries from direct competition; and binding international
rules
to force all corporations to trade fairly. Most of the localists,
who appear determined to have their cake and eat it, also claim
to
support these positions. They have yet to address or even to
acknowledge the glaring contradictions in which they have become
entangled.
To these just measures
we can add another, recently developed
by the man who designed the "contraction and convergence"
plan
for tackling climate change, Aubrey Meyer. Contraction and
convergence, which the African governments have now adopted
as their official position on climate change, first establishes
how much carbon dioxide humans can produce each year without
cooking the planet. It then divides that sum between all the
people of the world, and allocates to each nation, on the basis
of its population, a quota for gas production. It proposes a
steady contraction of the total production of climate-changing
gases and a convergence, to equality, of national production
per head of population. To produce more than its share a nation
must first buy unused quota from another one.2
Meyer points out that
by accelerating convergence we would grant
the poor world a massive trade advantage. Those nations using
the
least fossil fuel would possess a near-monopoly over the trade
in emissions. This would help redress the economic balance between
rich and poor and compensate the poor for the damage inflicted
by the rich nations' pollution.3
We have the opportunity
to fight for something unprecedented:
a trade treaty stacked against the rich. But if we are serious
about campaigning for fair rules, we must also cease campaigning
for unfair ones. The localists must confront their contradictions
and decide whose side they are on.
Next week: Picking
up the pieces from Cancun.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Open letter from
Spencer Fitz-Gibbon to George Monbiot, 25th June 2003.
This letter can be read online at:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/06/273186.html
2. See Aubrey Meyer,
2000. Contraction and Convergence: The Global Solution
to Climate Change. Green Books, on behalf of The Schumacher Society.
3. Aubrey Meyer, pers
comm.
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