Government policies in many developing countries which promote the planting of a narrow base of agricultural crops may hurt farmers in the long run, a United Nations human rights expert warned today. As a result of the global food crisis, developing countries “have massively reinvested in agriculture and have sought to provide farmers with the means of production they need to produce food,” Olivier de Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on...

The European Commission (EC) has called for an open discussion between India and the European Union on how to deal with social and environmental issues, child labour and related matters for the successful conclusion of the ongoing India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. “It is very clear for us that promoting sustainable development is not a veiled attempt of protectionism. On the contrary, trade negotiations are designed to eliminate barriers...

The Indo-Asean FTA provides an opportunity to be more engaged with the region This is an important week for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Over the weekend, at the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand, he will witness the final fruition of the second most important foreign policy initiative he took during his first term in office — the India-Asean Free Trade Agreement. This should ensure he will be in better...

There is a real fear that the Kyoto Protocol will be killed soon Two years ago, amidst much fanfare, a United Nations ministerial meeting in the fabled island of Bali adopted a “roadmap” for tackling climate change. The roadmap laid down two tracks for progress, corresponding to the two international agreements on climate change — the Kyoto Protocol and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. With regard to the first...

If a country’s national income is rising, someone in the country must be getting richer. Unless income distribution is changing, all income classes must get richer at about the same pace. If a constant standard of living is defined to classify everyone below it as poor, then as incomes rise, the proportion of the poor so defined must shrink, eventually to zero. If income grows 5 per cent a year...