Roundtable on the role role of subsidies as a means to promote sustainable development

Currently, the main focus of subsidy disciplines, established under the WTO agreements, is to try to control and reduce the trade-distorting effects of subsidies. However, in order to better identify the appropriate role of international disciplines on subsidies, the international community might want to take a broader perspective, taking into account moral responsibilities and responsibilities of justice in the global order.

There is a belief, therefore, that if international consensus is to be reached on subsidy disciplines, ways need to be found to take into account, for instance, the legitimate policy objectives of a subsidy, the degree to which a subsidy attains its objective efficiently (compared with other available means), and not in the least its impacts on other countries (which is broader than trade distortion). This would require balancing different interests (as subsidies unavoidably benefit some and harm others).

There is an emerging understanding that WTO negotiations alone cannot tackle these issues satisfactorily. Thus, there is a need to create a political momentum for these more fundamental questions of international governance of subsidies.

Against this background, the WWF and Foundation Getulio Vargas (FGV) School of Law organized an international roundtable under the heading “The role of subsidies as a means to promote sustainable development” in Sao Paulo 12-14 June 2006.

The roundtable brought together around 40 experts from academia, international organisations and public and private sectors with expertise in the fields of trade and economics, rural development, international law, philosophy and political science. Two background papers had been commissioned by WWF for the roundtable – one by economist Nii K. Sowa (Ghana) and former WTO negotiator Santiago Perry (Colombia) sketching out, respectively, the role of subsidies in general for maximising human welfare and ways to take this into account in multilateral disciplines particularly for agricultural subsidies. These papers can be downloaded by clicking the links on the right.