Agricultural subsidies, water shortages & poverty alleviation
More Information
Case Study - Utilising properly applied agricultural subsidies to support ecosystem health and services without undermining development.
The Challenges
Many subsidies have undermined livelihoods and fuelled environmental degradation...
The production of crops like sugar and rice in Southern Europe is supported by a wide range of subsidies, leading to over-production and artificially cheap exports.
These subsidies undermine the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries, and encourage the over-use of inputs such as water with negative environmental impacts such as dropping of water levels and blocking the natural inflow of water, sediments and nutrients, in for example the internationally important wetlands of Donana National Park in Spain.
When properly designed and applied, some subsidies could support the alleviation of poverty and the provision of essential ecosystem services.
We need a more sophisticated international debate on subsidies, capable of recognising that the market alone is failing to deliver production practices which guarantee the continued health of the agricultural ecosystems upon which we all depend
The need to tighten criteria...
How can economic instruments such as subsidies be best applied to address the immediate needs of the poor, whilst simultaneously considering long-term impacts upon the environment?
The challenge for policy makers is to rationalise categories of allowable subsidies and to tighten the criteria for their application to ensure that they support sustainable development. This involves finding ways to distinguish between beneficial and harmful subsidies and should include full consideration of their impacts, particularly on developing countries. It also demands an approach to addressing powerful lobbies that defend environmentally unsound subsidies.
The Opportunity
The current WTO negotiations on Agriculture provide an opportunity for debate on how instruments such as subsidies can be best used to ending export dumping and over-production, whilst permitting support payments clearly targeted at sustainable development goals.
