The world's forests, under siege from urban sprawl and ruthless commercial logging, are a treasure trove stacked with biological and genetic resources which could revolutionise medicine. That's the message self-described "renegade scientist" and Canadian author and botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, will deliver this week at a forestry conference as she stresses the world is wasting a vital resource.

The world's least developed nations say they're prepared to make concessions to revive global trade talks. After a two-day meeting in Senegal, the poorer nations welcomed recent concessions from both the US and Europe. They pledged to be more flexible in trade negotiations, particularly on the issues of cotton and farm subsidies, which led to a deadlock at the WTO summit in Cancun last September. In this interview with Radio Netherlands, Louk de la Rive Box, professor of international co-operation at Maastricht University, explains why there's a new mood of compromise.

Throughout history, international trade has generated considerable controversy. While conceding that some trade was imperative, Aristotle observed that trade was disruptive of community life. Until the 19th Century, most European powers viewed trade as a form of undeclared warfare. Their objective was - and still remains - the maximization of benefits accruing to themselves and minimization of those accruing to rival nations. The weapons of choice in this warfare were import barriers.

The idea of trade as a mutually beneficial activity only gained currency and political momentum following David Ricardo's elaboration of the theory of comparative advantage in 1817. Today the free trade doctrine reigns supreme. Trade negotiations - at multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral levels - all focus on reduction and eventual elimination of trade barriers (a kind of disarmament treaty).

The removal of trade barriers in rich countries can accrue certain benefits for impoverished countries. But this can only occur when the economies of underdeveloped countries are accorded the right space to respond first and foremost to the fundamental developmental needs of these countries. Rapid import liberalization imposed on underdeveloped countries via structural adjustment programmes has more often than not intensified poverty and inequality.

The IMF, the World Bank, and most industrialized country governments are strong advocates of trade liberalization. In the case of the two Bretton Woods institutions, advocacy has been backed by loan conditions which require countries to reduce their trade barriers. Largely as a result of these loan conditions, poor countries have been opening their economies much more rapidly than industrialized countries. Average import tariffs have been halved in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and cut by two-thirds in Latin America and East Asia.

Problems with Trade Liberalization

The popular view is that trade liberalization is an outcome of negotiated trade agreements. But, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) emphasizes that the principal vehicles for trade liberalization are the conditions attached to IMF and World Bank loans. That is, the IMF and World Bank disburse loans as, or when, borrowing governments comply with conditions, including trade-related conditions that are sometimes part of Structural Adjustment Programmes. The work programme of the Doha Agenda have been incorporated in IMF and World Bank SAPs for years.

Trade As If Nothing Else Mattered

Economists' training prepares them to build and have unshakeable belief in models that have not been successfully challenged. But they are not very well trained in how to rigorously verify their policy relevance for specific contexts. The models are often deployed on the assumption that they are relevant to a specific context without the benefit of supporting justification.

The assumption of applicability is perhaps the most widely deployed, yet unstated, auxiliary assumption used in economic policy analysis. It is especially concerning models dealing with underdeveloped countries where many of these assumptions below are routinely violated - especially those based on smoothly mobile labour and capital, complete and functioning markets, and perfect information flows.

Regional Integration and Regional Trade Agreements

Integration is once again a concept so much in vogue. The promoters of economic globalization are using it to justify the unprecedented expansion of the power of transnational corporations. The underdeveloped world, especially Africa, is being constantly reminded that it has to be integrated into the world economy if it is survive. The validity of this position will be examined briefly at some later stage. Integration means different things to different people. For some, it is an all-embracing union of contiguous countries and includes both economic and political areas. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union are perfect examples of this type of integration. For others, it is agreement among a group of countries to remove various kinds of trade barriers. In between these two extremes lie numerous types of arrangements. In all these arrangements, the overarching concern is the formation of a body with a common purpose, usually to increase human welfare.

Integration in Africa has been driven by two competing forces - one internal and the other external. Internal impetus to integration of African economies has been provided by the realization that the continent has over the centuries suffered wanton exploitation of its natural, material and financial resources at the hands of imperialist forces. The global economic arrangement since the 15th Century has defined for Africa its place in the international economic division of labour - to produce and export primary commodities in line with its perceived comparative advantage. Value adding by way of processing, manufacturing, packaging, branding etc. is left to industrialized countries. In other words, Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce.

The motivation for internally-driven integration derives from the following expected benefits:

- More efficient use of the region's capital, labour and natural resources, which are often less than optimally utilized nationally and has been exploited extensively by the industrialized countries.
- Developing the market, so that instead of fighting and bending backward to be 'granted' access to the markets of Europe and North America, Africa can begin producing first and foremost for its own markets.
- Reduced Costs of transaction within the region, as a result of reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers. This reduces monopolistic profits and leads to efficiency gains.
- Training effect, as national producers are gradually exposed to the regional market before the world market, since it is easier to compete in the regional market than in the global market. This could be a stepping stone to the outside world.

External interests also push for regional integration in Africa but for different reasons. The overarching motivation for externally-induced regional integration is to maintain the historical division of labour that assigns Africa the role of green field that feeds Northern industry with raw materials. Below are characteristics of externally-driven integration:

- High-tech, Low-value ghettoes: With the increasing demands for higher wages, improved working conditions and environmentally sound production methods, many transnational corporations are increasingly looking at Africa as possible sites for the assembly of their high technology exports such as electronics, auto and engineering products.
- Raw material reservoirs: In order to keep feeding the Northern industries with the necessary raw input, it is in the interest of industrialized economies to secure the source of minerals, agricultural commodities and other natural resource-based inputs. As it is cheaper to deal with a bigger entity with uniform policies and procedures than individual states with differing policies and often changing political moods.
- Entry points for multilateral negotiations: As resistance to many issues fronted by industrialised countries in the WTO intensifies, the North finds it easier forcing the issues through regional fora.
- Captive markets: Trade and trade negotiations are about accessing markets. Expansion and securing of African markets rank very high in the scheme of corporate interests in industrialized countries. It is the essence of integration of Africa into the global economy.

Cotonou Agreement

Perhaps the most important trade agreement outside the WTO agreements is the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU) relation under the Cotonou Agreement signed in June 2000. As a successor to the Lome Convention, which had guided these relations since 1975, the Cotonou Agreement has the following new characteristics;
- It breaks the solidarity of ACP countries by creating regional differentiation through negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
- It introduces reciprocity.
- It seeks to be WTO compatible (Indeed, the EU proposals are WTO-plus).
- Creates uncertainty and confusion among Least Developed Countries.

AGOA

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), though not a trade agreement, deserves serious attention for its destructive effect on Africa's economy. The eligibility criteria undermine policy autonomy of African countries. Some of the worrying items in the criteria include:
- US strategic interests clause (War against terrorism).
- Rules of origin
- Free Trade Areas with SSA
- Monitoring and review
- Study on improving agricultural practices in Africa (GMOs?)
- Elimination of restrictions to US investments

*Oduor Ong'wen heads the SEATINI Office in Kenya, in which this article was first published. For more information and subscriptions, contact SEATINI, Takura House, 67-69 Union Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe, Tel: +263 4 792681, Ext. 255 & 341, Tel/Fax: +263 4 251648, Fax: +263 4 788078, email: Email: [email][email protected], Website: www.seatini.org

Calls for a national slavery memorial day have been made by an United Kingdom MP, who says the horrors of the slave trade must not be forgotten. Three years ago Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly committed himself to supporting a Slavery Memorial Day, but a committee to turn this idea a reality collapsed just months later amid accusations that Home Office officials were trying to obstruct its' progress.

The showdown between the Government and private schools has intensified as Government toughened its stance and began shutting down some private boarding schools that had opened ahead of the start to the second school term, for increasing school fees without its approval. About 30 000 children are affected. Police officers were deployed to 45 private schools throughout the country that had allegedly refused to abide by the Government's order not to increase school fees, to ensure that these schools do not open for classes.

Press freedom suffered a substantial worldwide decline in 2003, according to a major study released by Freedom House. Legal harassment, political pressure, and violence by state and non-state actors against journalists combined to worsen conditions in many countries, resulting in the second consecutive year of a global decline in freedom for news media. The report was released to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The survey assesses the degree of print, broadcast, and Internet freedom in every country in the world and assigns to each a category rating of Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. It analyzes events during the calendar year 2003.

Education is paramount if we are to reach individuals infected with HIV and those living with AIDS. Obviously, our best resource is from those who are affected by the disease! Information is not reaching those most in need and there is a certain mistrust of science and medicine. People are afraid. Many have only seen or heard of people dying and many people believe the drugs will kill them. It is important that they learn from those whose lives have been saved and who have benefited from the drug treatments, renewing a quality of life they would not have had otherwise. Who better to explain the realities of living with HIV?

About 70,000 girls and one million infants born to young mothers die worldwide every year due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth, according to a report released on Tuesday by Save the Children. Many of these deaths could be avoided by policy and programme changes that help girls to postpone marriage and childbirth and provide health and education services to them, said the charity's "State of the World's Mothers" report.

More often than not, enrolment data for pre-primary education cover the entire age group, from 3(4) to 5(6) years, in a single rate. The problem with such aggregated reporting is that it fails to reveal differing enrolment rates from one single-year age group to the next, where considerable gaps have long been suspected. This is the conclusion of the just-published issue of the UNESCO Policy Briefs on Early Childhood.

'The Happiest Days of Your Life' is a tribute to how children remain children against the odds. The exhibition of photographs, taken by Ben Ingham is an intimate portrait of children's innate instinct to retain their childhood in some of the most troubled countries in the world. Commissioned by Save the Children, Ingham set off earlier this year with the remit to explore how vulnerable children in the developing world play and enjoy treats - two things fundamental to any childhood.

Accused of airing pornography and political propaganda, and of inflaming ethnic tensions, Kenya's numerous private FM radio stations may soon face curbs following a controversial probe into their content. Attorney-General Amos Wako said on 28 April that the government would soon take to parliament a Media Commission Bill aimed at ensuring professionalism among media practitioners.

Governments are not held accountable to the people they govern even in countries with a long tradition of democratic elections, according to a study released by the Washington-based Centre for Public Integrity. None of the 25 election-holding countries studied in the report achieved a "very strong" ranking on the Public Integrity Index, which measures access to information and the strength of anti-corruption mechanisms. Of the 25 countries, just six received "strong" marks - the United States, which finished first, followed by Portugal, Australia, Italy, Germany and South Africa.

Children everywhere are spending more time in school than ever before, but there remain substantial differences between countries and regions, according to UNESCO’s Global Education Digest 2004. According to the Digest, a child in Finland, New Zealand or Norway can expect to receive over 17 years of education, almost twice as much as in Bangladesh or Myanmar and four times as much in Niger or Burkina Faso. The new edition of the Digest presents the latest global education indicators, one example of which is school life expectancy (SLE), or the number of school years that a child, on average, is likely to spend in the education system.

Overall, young people today are better off than previous generations, but many are still severely hindered by a lack of education, poverty, health risks, unemployment and the impact of conflict, a new United Nations report on the global situation of youth reveals. The World Youth Report 2003 provides an overview of the global situation of young people. The first 10 chapters focus on the priority areas of education, employment, extreme poverty, health issues, the environment, drugs, delinquency, leisure time, the situation of girls and young women, and youth participation in decision-making identified by the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY) adopted by the General Assembly in 1995.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) has announced a global reduction of 30% in deaths from measles between 1999 and 2002. At 35%, the reduction in measles deaths was even greater in Africa, the region with the highest number of people affected by the disease. This progress demonstrates that collectively countries can achieve the United Nations goal of cutting global measles deaths in half by the end of 2005.

Brazil has won a landmark victory at the World Trade Organisation that could spell the beginning of the end of rich countries' subsidy payments to their farmers. The WTO, based in Geneva, has ruled that $1.5bn (£830m) of annual subsidies given by the United States government to its 25,000 cotton farmers are mostly illegal. The provisional ruling is confidential, but trade sources said pubic confirmation would be available as soon as next month and could start a domino effect whereby much of the £300bn in subsidies lavished on the rich world's farmers might tumble. "This could be the first domino," one said. The ruling is the first time a developing country has won such a decision from the WTO when arguing against one of the big trade powers.

The International Telecommunication Union, the organizing entity of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), is conducting a survey to obtain views on the perceived importance of agreed upon targets for improving connectivity and access in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The targets outlined in the WSIS Plan of Action were agreed to by 175 countries represented at the first phase of the Summit in Geneva, 10-12 December 2003. The objectives of WSIS are to build an inclusive information society that will put the potential of ICTs at the service of development and to promote the use of information and knowledge for the achievement of internationally agreed upon development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

An international team of academics from the University of Cambridge, Harvard Law School, and the University of Toronto has begun formally monitoring worldwide Internet censorship and surveillance. "The Open Net Initiative represents a new approach to university-based research," says Cambridge University's Rafal Rohozinski. "We fuse cutting-edge intelligence-derived techniques with a networked model of analysis that includes some of the brightest minds in this field - we are striving to become the eyes and ears on digital censorship worldwide."

Nearly half of Brazil's 178 million people are descendants of black Africans. If they can be encouraged to start speaking with their pocketbooks, they will be hard to ignore, activists say. Racial unity has long been elusive in Brazil. Even though the country projects an image of tolerance and equality, people with lighter skin hold most of the country's wealth and power.

Racism is an assault, often intentional but also covert, by individual acts or regular practice, against persons for the sole reason of their ancestry, history, or physical appearance. The person who has never had an encounter with someone hostile to his or her race will find it hard to comprehend. It is sheer horror, the worst of mockery. What then is race? This is a much harder question. Racial theorists like to say that race is both real and imaginary, a construct and a reality. This desire to have it both ways leads to some odd and contradictory conclusions.