MDGs, FTAs

Alphabet soup, anyone? The letters are swimming in my head like letters in a bowl of alphabet soup heaving with dollops of jargon. One moment I know what a bunch of letters means, the next moment I find myself asking what SIA is. I bet, you also do not know. SIA stands for sustainability impact assessment. Do FTA and EPA mean the same? Are we ever an MFN? What happened to the WTO?

And then there are the kilometric words. Trade liberalization, globalization, neo-liberalism, multilateral, bilateral, developmental, etc. Journalists hate long words. Why say less-fortunate when you simply mean the poor? But I will concede to the economists’ “below poverty line” although I can only picture a line, not the face of destitution, hunger or penury.

These thoughts were swirling in my head while attending two recent two seminars meant to help journalists understand what is going on in this world, this country in particular.

The first one was on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was exclusively for journalists and sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). For this one, the only way to get journalists to stay put was to fly them to some island. And so we were happily marooned in the island of Panglao in Bohol with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and SocialWatch (an activist NGO), to help with the A to Z of the MDGs. How to critically analyze the progress reports? How/where to find MDG-related stories?



The second meeting was of civil society organizations (CSOs) and academics who have been constantly monitoring, studying and objecting to the proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (EU-Asean FTA). I had been with them at the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) in Helsinki where a Pandora’s Box of FTA and neo-liberalism ills was opened for all to dissect and vivisect.

A little primer here. The UN’s MDGs have been around since the 1990s and your barangay captain should know them by heart. With 2015 as target year, all the 189 UN member states have pledged to: 1. eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, 2. achieve universal primary education, 3. promote gender equality and empower women, 4. reduce child mortality by two-thirds, 5. improve maternal health by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio, 6. combat and reverse the incidence and spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, 7. ensure environmental sustainability, 8. develop a global partnership for development.

Goals 1 to 7, we were told, were most urgent and must be dealt with on the ground. Goal 8 is kinda iffy, less difficult to track and quantify, something best addressed by governments of developed countries. But on second look, Goal 8 has a lot to do with Goals 1 to 7. In our pocket MDG primer, it is in fact the one with the longest explanation.

Part of it says: “Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory…address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports, enhanced debt-relief for heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debt…provide access to affordable essential drugs…make available the benefits of new technologies…”

Here the EU-Asean FTA could be put in context. The two meetings that I attended now meet. The goals of one and the issues of the other must now converge. CSOs from Asean and Europe are concerned about the proposed EU-Asean FTA that would be concluded within the next two years. The CSOs are demanding an SIA (remember?) before negotiations.

They cite the EU-Mexico agreement that resulted in Mexico’s doubling trade deficit. And contrary to the predicted benefits to labor, the agreement resulted in rising unemployment, temporary employment contracts, below-standard wages and no social security. While foreign investments have increased, this has resulted mainly in foreign takeovers of domestic industries, without generating additional employment or increases in wages.

The EU now appears to be pushing ahead with similar FTAs in other regions regardless of the consequences, the CSOs warn. The EU, they add, seems to be promoting anti-development policies with its push to incorporate the controversial issues already rejected at the Word Trade Organization (WTO) by Asean members.

Others issues that Philippine negotiators, legislators and executive officials should be aware of:

• the liberalization of services at a WTO-plus level, given the dominance of EU service companies, will tend to out-compete Asean service providers;
• limitations for national governments to regulate in the public interest will jeopardize access to essential services, and have far-reaching implications for the poor;
• EU requirements that Asean substantially lower its tariffs will result in a significant loss of revenue to developing countries which can not easily raise similar funds from other taxation sources;
• the EU’s high priority on access to raw materials will seriously undermine Asean’s sovereignty over their natural resources, including restrictions on exports, investment and intellectual property rights;
• the EU will push for market access commitments with regard to government procurement;
• intellectual property protection is already reducing access to affordable medicine and education in developing countries.

After the alphabet soup with dollops of jargon, I need to go out there and find/give the issues a human face.