Worldwide growth has never been so high. Yet unsustainable development gaps at the international, regional and sub-national levels are hiding behind this larger economic picture. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, although created to curb poverty worldwide, appear incapable of closing these gaps. Even worse, their past actions are widely challenged and cited by many developing countries as responsible for the deplorable economic situation those countries face today. Representatives from industrialized countries have joined the ranks of those criticizing the establishment. The financial crisis that rocked Asia in 1997 is referred to in South Korea as the “IMF crisis.” Japan and China at the time considered creating an “Asian IMF” to avoid reliance on the Washington-based financial body and submitting to structural adjustment conditionalities. Another famous example that shook the very foundations of the Bretton Woods “twins” was the 1998 Argentine crisis, which inspired criticism of the institutions and the relevance of their interventions, and illustrated their inability to adequately alert and regulate the international financial system.1.
Today, countries in need would rather look to the emerging economies (such as China, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia), whose increasing influence is rooted in significant financial reserves. Tomorrow, they will turn to the new regional banks created in the likeness of the “Banco del Sur.”2 The financial institutions are thus facing rough times, and the implicit post-war compromise, whereby the directorship of the IMF goes to Europe and that of the World Bank to the United States, today only adds fuel to the fire. Given the current climate of rapidly-changing international power relations, this approach to the directorship appointments indeed appears outdated.
One can hope, as does Kemal Dervis, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that “redefining the missions and reaching the hoped-for rapprochement of the distant cousins of the United Nations family [will be an opportunity] for greater coherence in economic, social and environmental governance, centered on the key concept of sustainable development.” »3 .
The World Trade Organization (WTO), for its part, is struggling to bring to a close a Doha Round that has focused only on trade issues. The influential States are accumulating bilateral agreements on the side, thereby gaining the concessions, particularly from the poorest countries, that they have been unable to negotiate multilaterally.
The FAO, which just celebrated its 60th anniversary, unfortunately has not fared much better in terms of its reputation. Judging from the preliminary version of a report published in July 2007 by an independent evaluation group4 , “the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is on the brink of the abyss;” the organization is suffering from a lack of trust from its Member States and must reprioritize and rethink its approach to governance and intervention if “employment and food for future generations” is to be its main objective. The FAO is “an organization of vital importance, providing vital services and essential goods, yet also an organization that urgently requires reforms if it is to renew itself, rebuild trust and hope and increase its resources.”
Finally, a United Nations Environment Organization is about to be established. Just as there already exist world organizations for education, science and culture (UNESCO) and health (WHO), the UNEO would serve as a replacement, with increased authority and jurisdiction, for the current United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). At the close of the meeting that brought together the Ministers of Environment and Foreign Affairs of 22 countries in Rio, Brazil, “all meeting participants agreed to recognize that today’s environmental challenges require a qualitative leap forward in the organization of international environmental governance,” stated Jean Louis Borloo, France’s Minister of the Environment, Development and Sustainable Development and Planning.
We can, and in fact should, be delighted at this heightened awareness of the urgent need for improved environmental management within the context of the United Nations as well as for increased financial resources.
Yet while many areas appear to have been covered, more or less successfully, from finance to the environment, one is entitled to wonder: when will a true world governance for agriculture emerge, one that measures up to the challenges before us?
WOAgri cannot overemphasize the need to prevent agriculture from being a secondary concern in the international arena. On the contrary, WOAgri is advocating, in this era of reforms, for agricultural issues to be actively considered within a context of renewed cooperation among States. The FAO in fact has taken a similar stance, while highlighting the role that it could play: “In terms of worldwide governance of food and agriculture, the strategic objective of the FAO must be to once again serve as a voice of authority at the intergovernmental level, so that it can speak on behalf of rural populations, the hungry and all those who would benefit from agriculture playing its own role in the economy.” 4.
|
1 For more on this subject, see “When the World Bank questions its own model”, the opinion piece published Jacques Carles, Executive Director of WOAgri, on January 15, 2007, in which he addresses the most alarming findings of an audit of the quality of World Bank studies and forecasts .
2 On May 3, 2007 in Quito, the Ministers of Economy of six South-American countries – Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil – committed to creating a “Bank of the South” [Banco del Sur]. This was the name given to a new, regional Latin American financial institution, created upon the initiative of Argentina and Venezuela. Suriname and Guyana may soon join the list of member countries.
3 Source : Une gouvernance partagée est la seule possible, Kemal Dervis, Administrator of the UNDP, in le Figaro August 22, 2007.
4 “FAO: The Challenge of Renewal” www.fao.org/unfao/bodies/IEE-Working-Draft-Report/K0489E.pdf
|