| Yash Tandon's Editorials - South Bulletin |
ISSUE 33: 28 fEBRUARY 2009, Recalling NyerereMwalimu Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania and the founding father of the South Centre, defined development as a continuous and long process of struggle for liberation from structures of domination and control, the right and access to decision making that affects the life and livelihood of the individual, the community, the nation and the region. He practiced what he preached; he was one of that rare breed of philosopher-kings. In his numerous writings (from 1963 to 1999), he elaborated on the objectives and processes of these struggles as in essence:
Issue 32: 16 February 2009, Open versus Closed Energy Systems and Climate Change
The immediate priority for all concerned about climate change, to be sure, is to find the ways and means to achieve the objective set by the UNFCCC, Kyoto and Bali as we move towards Copenhagen. These must be done on the basis of the following principles:
issue 31: 1 february 2009, putting production over trade and financeOne of the most flawed logic of the neoliberal globalisation paradigm of the last three decades has been the privileging of trade over industry, and finance over production. Symptomatically, the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) has been on the global agenda and media spotlight more than the United Nations Industry and Development Organisation (UNIDO). It should have been the other way round. Industry precedes trade; if there is no production there is no trade. One of the more hopeful side effects of the present crumbling of the Doha Round of Trade negotiations is that people will begin to prioritise production and industrialisation over trade. For sure, a development friendly outcome of the Doha Round would have been a good thing. But the fact that it has gone into a stalemate is indicative of a deeper malaise in the system. That is should come at the same time as the collapse of the global financial system is no accident. The simultaneous near-death, or at least ill-legitimisation, of both the WTO and the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) is related to a dual weakness in the global economic system -- the dominance of trade over industry, and of finance over production.
issue 30: 16 january 2009, The Palestine-Israel QuestionHistory will not absolve those world leaders who watch with cynicism the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in front of their very eyes in Gaza. Silence and inaction is only a step removed from complicity. The Kafkaesque contrast between Kosovo and Treblinka where the West intervened righteously and brought individuals to trial before the international human rights tribunals and their visible, audible, connivance at the carnage now afoot in Gaza will also not be lost to History. It is a matter of time, surely, that the individuals responsible for these crimes will be brought to court. Even the people of Israel, may be the next generation, will eventually see from hindsight the ironical and cruel similarity between the ghettos of Auschwitz and Dachau, in which many of their forefathers perished, and the "final solution" inflicted on the ghettoized population of Gaza. Cardinal Renato Martino echoed the sentiment of Pope Benedict XVI when he compared Gaza to a Nazi camp (See The Independent, 9 January 2009).
issue 29: 16 December 2008, The South Centre, Its Promises and Challenges: Some Year End ReflectionsAs the year draws to a close, it is time to reflect on what the South Centre has been doing, including its promises and challenges.
Issue 28: 1 December 2008, A Case For Radical Reform of the World Trade OrganisationGeneva has a surrealist atmosphere about it. It is not really part of the normal world, at least not the world of the South where two-thirds of humanity live. The predictable public transport system timed to tick with the Swiss clock and the peaceful surroundings of Swiss mountains and Lake Geneva provide the cool ambience in which diplomats from the South and the North negotiate on matters from trade to intellectual property regimes, from disarmament to human rights. Geneva throws a comfortable veil of seeming aloofness from the real world. The negotiations have an air of abstraction from the reality of power politics. The harsh and cruel realities of an often violent world out there, especially in the global south, become abstract and distant. Geneva is a synthetic, sanitised place.This is both good and bad. It is good because it provides a certain degree of comfortable decoupling of international trade negotiations from the messy daily life of food shortages, people dying of AIDs and cholera, and terrorist attacks. But it has a reverse side to it. The existential detachment also leads to conceptual detachment. Thinking becomes universalised and idealised abstractions from reality. And when it comes to trade negotiations within the subliminal waterfront façade of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), mathematical formalism -- an abstruse numbers game -- takes over in ever repeating incantation of the same over and over. Coefficients and percentages parody life. This is true of whether the trade negotiators are working on the finer details of "the Swiss formula" on matters related to manufacturing and industry, curiously known by a negative formulation - Non-Agricultural Market Access (or "NAMA" as the experts will tell you), or "Ag", which is the experts' lingo for agricultural negotiations... iSSUE 27: 16 November 2008, Why the Ecuadorian Proposal May Be a Better Response to Financial Crisis than the G20 DeclarationOn 15 November 2008, at the invitation of President George W. Bush, a group of 20 countries (G20) -- selected by the President -- met at the White House, and following three-and-half hours of discussion, issued a Declaration on “Financial Markets and the World Economy”. There was very little new or inspiring about the Declaration. The G20 leaders made “a commitment to free market principles, including the rule of law, respect for private property, open trade and investment, competitive markets, and efficient, effectively regulated financial systems.”Their analysis of the “Root Causes of the Current Crisis” boiled down to blaming “market participants” for seeking higher yields “without appreciation of the risks”; in a world of “increasingly complex and opaque financial products”; “inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies”; and “inadequate structural reforms” -- all of which contributed to “excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.” ...
issue 26: 1 november 2008, NEOLIBERAL OBSCURANTISM AND ITS ILLFATED CHILDRENOn close questioning from the US Congressional hearings Mr. Alan Greenspan who for eighteen years has been at the apex of the Federal Reserve of the United States admitted that he found a “flaw in the free market theory.” Representative Waxman pursued relentlessly in his questions. You, mean, he asked, “that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working”? Greenspan replied, “Absolutely, precisely. You know that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with the very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.” (International Herald Tribune, October 24, 2008). Mr. Greenspan should be commended for his honesty. This is more than one can say for literally hundreds of ideologists, clustered around some of the “best” universities in the North and also in the South, and “economists” in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From their cloistered and hallowed sanctuaries they “design” policies for the distressed nations of the South whose leaders run to them for “advice” and financial “bail outs”. Sadly, some countries in the South have already started running to them in the present situation of global financial crisis. They should be warned that in their rush to the IMF/WB they are not necessarily helping their people. These are institutions of ideological obscurantism; they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Issue 25: 16 october 2008, TIME FOR A NEW BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCEThe months-long process leading to the Finance for Development (FfD) review conference that is to take place in Doha in end November is reaching its final stage. A draft outcome document is already out although negotiations on it are more or less frozen until Doha. It would be unrealistic to factor effects of the Western financial meltdown into the draft text. Never very enthusiastic about the FfD addressing systemic issues, the US, the European Union and Japan are likely to play down the crisis. That is one limiting factor about Doha FfD. The other is that in multilateral negotiations their outcomes do not necessarily reflect the reality on the ground; they reflect, rather, a certain “diplomatic reality”. Diplomatic realities are “negotiated truths” between states in the global system of asymmetrically positioned power relationships. These “truths” may have only a partial correspondence with “existential truths” about reality on the ground. In the “negotiated diplomatic truth” of the outcome text, the FfD conference will try to craft a language that addresses the concerns of the South without embarrassing the North. It might repeat the ritual of promoting the good of globalisation whilst minimizing its negatives. It might also repeat the mantra about how official development assistance (ODA) has been good for the South and how efforts must be made by the developed countries to meet their 0.7 per cent obligation, and refer to the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) that endorsed the Paris Declaration of Aid Effectiveness (PDAE) as a “step forward”.
issue 24: 1 October 2008, Global Financial Meltdown: The West and the RestThe debt-financed US-led global economy is crumbling. What lessons can the leaders of the South learn from the present meltdown of the Western capitalist system? The first lesson, surely, is that contrary to mainstream thinking, the market does not have a self-corrective mechanism. In the present crisis the “market makers” are watching nervously from the sideline as the Congress and the politicians huddle together to see how to bail out the banks. The leaders of the South have been instructed in innumerable reports and policy recommendations by “experts” from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as well as Northern politicians that they should let their economies be ruled by the market. As recently as 9 February 2008 the EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson spoke at Cambridge arguing, essentially, that if the South does not liberalise its markets, it must be forced to do so through applying the WTO rules of reciprocity. This is part of the neoliberal rhetoric. If businesses fail, let them. All state intervention or cushioning is like nursing dying patients. In the course of time, the countries will find their “niche” comparative advantage in the global chain of production and trade. In the meantime, if people suffer they must be made to understand that this is the necessary pain of adjustment. If millions of small holder food and cotton producing farmers in the South perish because “free trade” demands further liberalisation of the global market, then it is just bad luck for them and their families. Paradoxically, this logic is now stood on its head when it comes to bailing out the monolithic financial institutions in the North, and protecting the jobs and house mortgages of those who, through no fault of theirs, have become victims of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.... issue 23: 16 september 2008, assessing accra action agendaThe OECD-inspired and promoted Accra Action Agenda (AAA) on “aid effectiveness” was concluded on 4 September 2008 as a “consensus” document by almost 1,200 delegates from about 100-odd countries and intergovernmental organisations (IGOs).There was also a side event of the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) attended by some 600 delegates from 325 CSOs from 88 countries. What did Accra achieve? What the Accra conference achieved was to draw attention to the unwieldiness of aid as an instrument of development. According to the OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development), donors sent 15,000 missions to 54 recipient countries in 2007. In Tanzania alone the local aid bureaucracy produced 2,400 quarterly reports to donors. The Paris Declaration that formed the basis of the negotiations in Accra was aimed at bringing some order to the aid industry. However, the irony of the situation is that the present chaotic situation of the aid industry is the second best option for the poor countries than the anticipated order of the AAA(The best option is to get out of aid dependence).
issue 22: 1 september 2008, beyond the paris declarationby Benjamin W. Mkapa, President of Tanzania (1995-2005) An exit strategy from aid dependence requires a radical shift both in the mindset and in the development strategy of countries dependent on aid, and the direct involvement of people in their own development. It also requires a radical and fundamental restructuring of the institutional aid architecture at the global level.A more immediate objective is to initiate dialogue with the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which forms the basis of a high level meeting from 2-4 September 2008 in Accra, and to caution the developing countries against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) offered by the OECD. If adopted, it could subject the recipients to a discipline of collective control by the donors right down to the village level. And this will especially affect the present donor-dependent countries, in particular the poorer and more vulnerable countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Beyond the Paris Declaration, there is still the question: What then? There has to be a strategy for ending aid dependence, to exit from it.
Issue 21: 16 august 2008, role of civil society in national spaceFor thirty years (from mid 1970s to the end of the last century) many governments in the South, especially in the low and middle-income countries, had surrendered their right to make macroeconomic policies over to the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) -- the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). The BWIs’ so-called Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) advocated, among other things, free market liberalisation, fiscal austerity, privatisation and marketisation of essential social services such as health, education and water. The most potent tool for enforcing SAPs was the so-called “development aid”, or Official Development Assistance (ODA). Looking back it is truly amazing that even tiny amounts of ODAs with BWI conditionalities were able to tie up the entire national revenues of these countries and shape their “development” strategies. This is because the politicians and bureaucracies of these countries had internalized the “Washington Consensus”, the ideological bedrock of these policies. For this reason, none of these governments ever pointed out that the so-called “consensus” was never negotiated in any intergovernmental process, either in the United Nations, or even within the BWIs.
issue 20: 1 August 2008, non-aligned movement and the collapse of the doha roundIn the week ending the month of July, Geneva and Teheran sent two parallel signals to the world. In Geneva the Doha Round of trade negotiations conducted within the multilateral framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) collapsed. In Teheran the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) reemerged invigorated by the collective action of its 118 member states. What accounted for the failure of one, and the success of the other? Two global political-economic undercurrents have surfaced that may explain this dual phenomenon. The first is the futile attempt by the power holders of the old order to sustain that order, including an outdated and unfair trading regime. The second is the countervailing power emerging in the South that is challenging the old order. The world is going through a period of transition from one order to another. The new order is still in the making, its essential features are in the twilight zone symbolized, this month, in the WTO and NAM.
issue 19: 16 July 2008, The G8 has no Legitimacy. It should dissolve itself
Legitimacy is a philosophical-political concept. It is also an ethical concept. In Western philosophy a distinction is sometimes made between legality and legitimacy. Before the dawn of liberal democracy in the West, the will of the sovereign monarch constituted the legal order. His or her decision was final. The French Revolution changed that. Henceforth, only the will of the people, expressed through representative institutions or directly by franchise, conferred legitimacy to the legal order. Last week, for example, the people of Nonetheless, what the Irish vote showed was that the democratically expressed will of the people is the ultimate test of the legitimacy of any institution that seeks to make decisions on behalf of the people
issue 18: 1 July 2008, Global Food Crisis: Alternatives to the Green RevolutionOn 17 June 2008, the South Centre, in conjunction with the Mission of Indonesia in Geneva, organised a one-day workshop on the food and energy crisis stalking the world. Central to the food crisis is the issue of prices. How are high prices in food and energy sources going to affect their production and distribution? This is the first question. The second is: Who are the likely beneficiaries of high food prices?... In view of the above, the countries of the South have to balance between the immediate demands of the moment and planning for the long term strategy. Clearly, there is some urgency about the present crisis situation. Communities in distress would need emergency supplies of food...
issue 17: 16 June 2008, EPAS WILL BENEFIT EUROPE AT THE COST OF BOTH ACP AND LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIESCurrently the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are locked in negotiations with the European Union (EU) for the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as part of the implementation of the Cotonou Agreement that was signed in June 2000. Initially, when the EPA negotiations began in 2001 there was going to be just one agreement. It was to be between the then 15 countries of Europe, and 76 of the ACP countries. Since then the EU has enlarged itself to 27 members still signing as one entity with full powers given to the European Commission (EC) to negotiate for all of them. The ACP countries in the meantime have allowed themselves to be fragmented into three regions (Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific); then, later, into six (Western Africa, Central Africa, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific); and later still into several -- in the case of Africa, into its almost total fragmentation. Finally, we now have, in many cases, bilateral agreements between one African country on one side and the European Community on the other – a veritable David and Goliath phenomenon. It is tempting to make the comparison with the Berlin Conference of 1884, when European imperial powers sat around a map of Africa and carved it out between them. However, there are two significant differences...
issue 16: 1 june 2008, why a proper analysis of the current food crisis so importantA proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.The analytical jungle needs to be carefully traversed. But in this jungle, watch out for animals that have sharp claws and powerful teeth. We thought “imperialism” was a “dirty word” not to be uttered in polite company. But under the title “Food Investment, not Imperialism”, an editorial in the London Financial Times of May 13, 2008 advocated foreign investments as a solution to the problem of food crisis. However, having expounded the virtue of what it called “cross-border farm investment” (read, FDIs), it goes on with what we cannot but agree. It says: Bravo! There is sometimes wisdom that comes through looking at history from hindsight. Sadly, history is often forgotten by those who are in a hurry to sign free trade agreements (FTAs), Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), donor aid loans and grants, and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). The lure of money to balance the budget or to finance food imports is too powerful against the lessons of history. Only if our policy makers were able to exercise some foresight!....issue 15: 16 MAY 2008, WIPO, WCO, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND BORDER CUARDSIntellectual Property (IP) enforcement is a contentious terrain. The developed countries have been pushing one-sidedly for the enforcement of IP right holders, whilst the developing countries have been demanding that IP rights be balanced against the right to development. Against this background, the attempt to get the World Customs Organization (WCO) to adopt the Provisional Standards Employed by Customs for Uniform Rights Enforcement (SECURE) at its Council meeting in June 2008 poses a serious challenge to the developing countries. If adopted in its current form, these standards would seriously compromise both the WIPO development agenda and TRIPS flexibilities. The policy space that the developing countries need in order to access knowledge and technology for their industrialisation would diminish...  click here to download
issue 14: 1 may 2008, reflections on unctad xiiIs this a gradual denouement of UNCTAD, a carefully sequenced demise leading to its ultimate collapse at the next Conference in 2012? Possibly, but not inevitably.If ever an argument was needed for UNCTAD to better use the medium of civil society to advance its development agenda, it was Accra that provided it. There was plenty in the activities of the civil society just across from the official Main Forum that could have provided the ammunition to UNCTAD to inject a new life into itself. Sadly, a chasm separated the “negotiating context” of UNCTAD (seeking to arrive at some “diplomatic truth” about reality) from the civil society forum that was expressing the brutal reality of “existential truth”. What the official discourse lacked, the civil society provided, but the two twains did not meet. click here to download
issue 13: 16 april 2008, why strengthening unctad is also in the interest of the west?The objective of this editorial is not to make a case for any one or more of these contentious issues. It is, rather, to argue a more general point, namely, that if the developed countries of the North wish to weaken the UNCTAD or to disempower it in critical areas of its work, then they are on to a wrong track. Or, to put it more positively, it is in the interest of both the North as well as the South, to strengthen UNCTAD and not to weaken it. Why not? The UNCTAD must be provided with adequate resources by the UN system. there are also existing multilateral institutions that can be strengthened, among them the UNCTAD, and reinvented to be more in tune with the times...
issue 12: 1 april 2008, unctad xii: negotiating "diplomatic truths"Diplomatic truths, in other words, are “truths” as negotiated between states in the global system of asymmetrically positioned power relationships. These “truths” may have little or only partial correspondence with “existential truths” about reality on the ground. Those who have to make a living out of their impoverished resources may wonder in awe at the “diplomatic truths” negotiated in their name by their representatives in the multilateral fora. Existential and diplomatic truths are two different things. If the “diplomatic truths” are totally at variance with the “existential reality”, then those “truths” are unenforceable, like what could happen with the EPAs that the EU is trying hard to conclude with the ACP states. Both the North and the South negotiators in UNCTAD XII must bear this in mind when negotiating the future of this very important body in the UN system. Nonetheless, “negotiated truths” about reality on the ground cannot be taken lightly. They have to be taken seriously.
issue 11: 16 march 2008, south expectations of the development cooperation forumWhat are the major challenges affecting development cooperation? What innovative process could the DCF apply to foster the participation of a wide range of stakeholders? What would be the ideal outcome of the first DCF? What could be the vision for development cooperation in the year 2015? To understand these issues from a South perspective, the South Centre undertook a desk study and interviews of some South government delegations and negotiators (mostly Geneva-based), IGO groups (such as G77), IGO agencies (such as FAO, IFAD, WFP), and civil society representatives. Based on this research, and on presentations made by South representatives at the High-Level Symposia in Vienna (April 2007) and Cairo (January 2008), the Centre came up with a “vision” of the South on DCF... click here to download
issue 10: 1 march 2008, good governance and colonial guiltWhat is needed is a new model of relationship between the developed and the less developed countries.The more developed countries among the South must provide an alternative model to relating to the less developed ones, and not mimic those of the nineteenth century colonial period. Ultimately, however, it is the leadership in the less developed countries that must take the burden and responsibility of creating these relationships. There are some good examples in Africa of wise political leadership that are healing the wounds of the past and creating indigenously accountable structures of governance. But there are others that are failing to do so. The challenge of the political leadership in Africa, above all, but in all the rest of the South, is to persist in the “National Project”, the challenge of building viable nations out of the fragmented and divided societies left behind in the wake of the colonial period... click here to download
issue 9: 16 fEBRUARY 2008, A NEW GEO-POLITICAL DOUBLE PARADOX STALKS THE WORLDThere is a new geo-political double paradox that stalks the world. One aspect of this double paradox has to do with the relation between some increasingly wealthy countries in the South and the older wealthy countries of the North. These “nouveau riche” nations, like China, India, Brazil, and those in Gulf have now enough wealth not only to buy off some of the major assets owned by northern corporations, but also to recapitalize northern private equity firms and banks in the throes of deepening credit squeeze.But there is yet another aspect of this new geo-political paradox. Amongst the nations of the South, there is an increasing divide between the newly enriched large nations, and the vast bulk of the nations of the South (more than two-thirds of them) that are getting under more entrenched domination and control of the older countries of the North. Is there a connection between the two aspects of this double paradox?......
issue 8: 1 february 2008, a perspective on american presidential electionsThe person who takes Presidential authority in the United States verily affects the lives of millions of people in the world, directly or indirectly, more than the leader of any other nation. This is because of the US global might and reach, and the peculiarities of the American Constitution that puts an incredible amount of power in the office of its President. The President of the United States bust have a vision that goes beyond the a narrowly conceived national interest. Certain concerns are addressed from the South perspective: knowledge access, challenging the "Washington Consensus", sustainedly unfair distribution of resource, reconfigure the institutions of global governance, climate change, and Philanthropy deficient...
issue 7: 16 january 2008, Development dialogue with donorsA certain lack of candor characterizes the present development dialogue between the rich and the poor nations. There is a palpable reluctance to accept the truth that the system is not working for the poor of the world. Globally the poor have lost out, and not just in Africa. The share of benefits from global economic growth reaching the world's poorest people is actually shrinking, while they continue to bear an unfair share of the costs. Also the creeping effects of climate change will even further worsen the condition of the poor. The larger picture of the South's integration into the neoliberal globalization has a similar story. This month the Advisory Body of the UN’s Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) is meeting in Cairo. The DCF is still in early years, so this is a good opportunity to define its role. In our view, the DCF must provide a normative anchor to broader issues hampering development in the South. Above all, it must not become the voice of the donors or of the OECD.
issue 6: 16 december 2007, paradox of trade and developmentTwo simultaneous events unfolded in recent weeks. One was the initialed goods-only interim agreement leading to a full Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the countries of Eastern Africa and the European Union sometime in 2008. And the second was the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Bali in Indonesia. Two events with no immediately obvious compelling connection. What went unnoticed is that the connection with EPA agreement and Bali Convention on Climate Change. Taking Lake Naivasha's dying for cutting flowers industry as an example, calling for the caution about paradox on trade and development.
issue 5: 1 december 2007, bali must put development squarely on climate change regimeOur civilization has entered a new and critical stage. Scientific evidence fully supports the conclusion that climate change is largely human-induced and will affect us all. But the causes and the impacts of climate change do not relate to all of us in equal measures. The industrialized countries bear greater historical responsibility for causing it whilst the developing countries bear greater adverse impact. Developing countries have ended up paying the price for energy profligacy that occurred as select countries became industrialized. The fulfillment of the right to development in an equitable and sustainable manner must be linked to the establishment of a supportive international economic system to stabilise climate change. The global community gathered in Bali for the 13th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to put in motion regime to stress climate change.
issue 4: 16 November 2007, bank de sud is a revolutionary step forwardAfter much speculation and some hostile coverage in Western media the Banco del Sur – the Bank of the South (BdS) – is to be launched on December 5, 2007. It was thought that close US allies - Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Central America – might oppose its formation. This may have been mere wishful thinking. In fact, most of South America is now on board. of course there still many questions to be settled, weighty policy and operational matters, hopefully a robust system will emerge in not too distant future. It is indeed quite revolutionary in its ambition and far reaching in its potential impact on the global financial architecture. Certain matters must engage the new Bank to ensure it dose serve as a genuinely development bank......
issue 3: 1 november 2007, decoupling is now an economic and political imperative for the south“Decoupling” is the idea that the economies of the Industrialized and the Developing Countries are no longer closely related, and that a slowdown in the former can be offset by growth in the latter, especially in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). "The world economy is decoupling from the US economy, and that BRIC are the key to global decoupling" said Goldman Sachs. We argue that it is indeed imperative that the developing countries strive to decoupling (selectively disengage) from Western Economies, reducing their dependence on them, and seeking to develop markets in the South, which avoid the contagious effects of Western financial and speculative markets. These and assets pricing mechanisms are even more risky for the South than terms of trade.
issue 2: 16 october 2007, rising to the challenge of innovationThe link between innovation and patents is often misunderstood or deliberated misrepresented. One does not necessarily measure the other. Patents may encourage innovation but they could equally discourage it. The usual argument is that patents are necessary for investors to put money into risky ventures. But studies show that a strong patent system does not lead to innovation but to monopolization of knowledge. Developing countries do not oppose the patent system. They also want to benefit from knowledge resources. However. inequities embedded in the present Patent regime, sanctions-bearing treaties such as the TRIPS in the WTO. The South must harness its innovative capacity. The progress included the Development Agenda, International Symposium on 'Examining Intellectual Property Enforcement from a Development Perspective'....
Issue 1: 1 oCTOBER 2007, sOME HOME TRUTHS ABOUT CURRENT NEGOTIATIONS ON AgRICULTURE AT WTOThe South Bulletin is back. South Bulletin: Reflections and Foresights has a new look and a new format that puts greater emphasis on sharing Knowledge that Matters for the South. This is an outcome of ideas shared by several colleagues, including officials from Member Countries of South Centre in Geneva, New York, Brussels and in the Capitals who would like the Bulletin to be interactive. The new Bulletin will enable cross-sharing of experiences and fulfill specific knowledge needs on current and emerging issues in which developing countries are stakeholders...
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