Nairobi meet saves Doha Round and that’s it
The 10th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Nairobi brought few victories for India or, for that matter, developing countries in general. Minister of State for Industry and Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman, who led India's delegation, put up a brave fight and ensured that no territory was lost. But there was little progress on key issues. The biggest fear at Nairobi was that the Doha Development Agenda, which lies at the heart of the current Doha Round of negotiations and whose fundamental objective is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries, would be discarded altogether, as developed countries want to start a new round with new topics.
Thankfully, that has not been the case — for now, the DDA remains in place, even though the joint declaration allows just about enough space for developed countries to eventually bring in new issues that the developed countries have opposed. More importantly, the DDA was not officially re-affirmed by all members in Nairobi. This has happened for the first time since the agenda was introduced in 2001, and as a statement from the Commerce Ministry noted “marks a significant departure from the fundamental WTO principle of consensus-based decision making”. Even Minister Sitharaman said that she was “utterly disappointed” that the DDA wasn't unanimously reaffirmed. That there has been a public acknowledgement of the fact that WTO members disagree over the foundational document of the talks, explains why the negotiations ended the way they did.
The Nairobi package had six items, of which two were of primary importance to India: First, a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes and, second, a Special Safeguard Mechanism to protect poor farmers from import surges from industrialised countries. On both counts, India and other developing countries put forth proposals that were, unfortunately, rejected by developed countries. Still, in the first case, India sought and was successful in obtaining a re-affirmative Ministerial Decision that commits members to “engage constructively” to find a permanent solution even though there was little progress on the shape and structure of the permanent solution itself. The second case of SSMs has also played out in a similar manner.
India successfully negotiated a Ministerial Decision that developing countries will have recourse to an SSM, that members will continue to negotiate such a mechanism, and that the WTO General Council will regularly review the progress of these negotiations. However, there was no significant progress on the contours of the SSM, which, for all practical purposes, has been stuck at the same point since the 2005 Hong Kong ministerial. Essentially, what India has done at Nairobi is ensured that the two key issues remain on the “agenda of future discussion in the WTO”. Now, given that the Doha Round itself was being threatened, the importance of this shouldn’t be underestimated.