Search results

The paper reviews and evaluates the global political discussions of G-8 and G-20 Member countries on food security and food price volatility since the L'Aquila Initiative in 2009. It shows that some progress was achieved with respect to better coordination of agricultural policies and stricter regulation of financial markets, especially at the 2011 Cannes Summit Meeting of the G-20. However, no agreement was reached in areas crucial for food security such as biofuel mandates or agricultural trade policies. A discretionary approach towards stabilizing food prices may, however, rather exacerbate than mitigate volatility. Regarding financial markets the respective initiatives of the US and the EU prove the willingness of the executive to control excessive speculation, but the legislative procedure has not been completed, and interest groups are working to water down the proposed provisions. In the preparations for the upcoming G-8 and G-20 Meetings no new impulses for food security are discernable. The priority lists are topped by macro-economic issues. Under these circumstances developing countries will have no choice but to forge new alliances to bring the food security issue back to the global agenda.

In the 1980s, the Western Pacific hemisphere ranging from Japan and the PR China to Australia and New Zealand has remained the growth pole of the world economy. Real per capita incomes of East and Southeast Asian developing economies grew even faster in this decade than in the 1970s [World Bank, 1990: Table 1.3] despite major disturbances in their global environment such as the world-wide recession in the early 1980s, increasing protectionism in the EC and the US, large exchange rate fluctuations, high and volatile real interest rates, and commodity price shocks. The integration into the international division of labour in manufactures was a driving force behind the favourable economic performance of Asian-Pacific economies in the 1980s. This is reflected in the growing importance of manufactures and in particular capital goods in their export basket. In 1988, about 44 per cent of all developing countries' exports originated from the Asian-Pacific region [World Bank, 1990: Table 14], and Asian NIEs and Near NIEs participated overproportionately in the expansion of highly income elastic intra-industry trade with capital goods [GATT, 1989: Table 4].

Most low income countries are characterised by a high dependence on exports of a small number of agricultural or mineral commodities. In the 1980s, the economic and social performance of these countries has been extremely dismal. Declining per capita incomes, stagnating food production, and an increasing foreign debt burden indicate a failure of development strategies applied in these countries as well as of foreign aid policies pursued by donor countries and institutions. Low income countries have suffered from a combination of adverse commodity price movements and an increasing inability to adjust to a changing external environment. Adjustment has been hampered by conflicting and often misguided policy signals, weak economic institutions, and a rapid deterioration of public management in general. These shortcomings were rooted in fundamental social conflicts, in particular the "personal rule" of parasitic elites or the emergence of a non-productive state class. A development strategy for the 1990s has to pave the way towards economic diversification and a better integration of domestic markets in low income countries. Such a strategy requires the discrimination of the commodity producing sector to be abandoned, a return to macro-economic stability, and institution building. Necessary prerequisites for success are improved access of low income countries to the markets of industrialised countries and the necessity to convince the ruling elites to sustain policy reform. Industrialised countries have hitherto neglected the political economy of decision-making in low income countries. Neither stricter conditionality nor more foreign aid or more sophisticated international commodity policies alone will be able to turn the tide. Policy reform has to be initiated from within low income countries with foreign donors mainly playing a catalytic role. For this reason, foreign aid policies should give priority to a strengthening of political bargaining processes within low income countries and to supporting actually implemented reform programmes. Such a foreign aid policy for the 1990s would require new criteria for aid allocation among countries and new priorities for aid programmes and projects. To remove politico-economic constraints and institutional weaknesses, foreign aid should focus on the development of a well-functioning domestic economic order, human resource development, and financing of poverty or ecology-related programmes. If some governments of low income countries are notoriously unwilling to improve fundamental economic conditions donors should not hesitate to reduce their efforts to the supply of emergency relief.

In the 1980s, the export drive of ASEAN countries was challenged by contradictory changes in their external economic environment. The decade began with severe economic recession in all major industrialised countries combined with a steep slump of commodity prices and a rapidly appreciating U.S. dollar exchange rate. After evaluating the importance of ASEAN countries for EC manufactured imports, the competitive position of ASEAN suppliers vis-a-vis other suppliers from developing countries, in particular those from other Asian Newly Industrialising countries, and the effects of EC trade policies on the ASEAN trade performance are analysed. (DÜI-Sen)