Description
Reports
suggest that recent efforts to put the World Trade Organization's Doha
trade talks back on track may prove successful, enabling parties to
resume formal negotiations in late 2004 - early 2005. The anticipated
return to the negotiating table will be due to a large extent to an
agreement by WTO members on terms to pursue further trade-liberalization-driven
reform of agricultural policies on a global level.
The
goal of this Strategic Dialogue was to determine a better sense of how
the agricultural negotiations in the Doha round can increase benefits
for poor people and nations and how to link developments in the negotiations
to other areas of policy necessary for trade liberalization to realize
its potential towards improvement of the lives of the world's poor.
The
Windsor strategic dialogue had been conceptualized as an opportunity
for a select mix of trade, agriculture, poverty, and sustainable development
analysts and actors to explore shared concerns and work towards a common
vision for agriculture policies reform, such that the resulting WTO
processes and agreements address the imperatives of poverty alleviation
and food security. In this sense the dialogue focused around three sets
of driving questions:
1. Principles and assumptions currently driving reform, are they conducive
to pro-development outcomes? In the current round's three-pillar approach
and ambitions set, what are key specific features to secure gains for
poor countries, and for the poorer sectors in them in particular?
2.
Are there key opportunities outside the formal structure of current
trade negotiations that would help poor countries benefit from further
liberalization, and could sustainability-oriented strategies help realize
those opportunities? How do these opportunities interface with the negotiation,
crafting and implementation of trade rules? What is needed at this stage
in order to ensure that outcomes of the Doha talks support these opportunities?
3.
Is the vision embedded in the operation and agreements of the Multilateral
Trade System helpful? Can we work on an overall vision of how trade,
agriculture, and development policies need to come together to benefit
the poor, and what kinds of information, collaboration, and strategy
are required to create such a vision?
The
main objectives of the meeting were to:
