Agriculture in the Doha Agenda

The author looks at the OECD domestic political economy associated with ongoing WTO farm negotiations, focusing on the OECD-based coalitions which could be helpful for WTO negotiators. Support from individual final consumers and taxpayers is far from guaranteed because consumers are spending less and less on food, and because taxpayers support, more or less willingly, non-trade concerns, such as environment or food safety, that they tend (wrongly) to associate with domestic farmers. As a result, trade negotiators should look at other allies. A natural candidate is a powerful group of consumers-the agribusiness industries-for which a reduction of the still high protection of their products under the Doha Round requires a corresponding reduction of protection in their farm inputs. They should also talk to farmers, hence sharpen their arguments, in particular by focusing on the distinction between small and large farmers, the latter being by far the main beneficiaries of the current OECD farm protectionist policies.Agribusiness&Markets,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Research,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Agribusiness&Markets,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Environmental Economics&Policies

Hunting in times of change: Uncovering indigenous strategies in the Colombian amazon using a role-playing game

Despite growing industrialization, the shift to a cash economy and natural resource overexploitation, indigenous people of the Amazon region hunt and trade wildlife in order to meet their livelihood requirements. Individual strategies, shaped by the hunters' values and expectations, are changing in response to the region's economic development, but they still face the contrasting challenges of poverty and overhunting. For conservation initiatives to be implemented effectively, it is crucial to take into account people's strategies with their underlying drivers and their adaptive capabilities within a transforming socio-economic environment. To uncover hunting strategies in the Colombian Amazon and their evolution under the current transition, we co-designed a role-playing game together with the local stakeholders. The game revolves around the tension between ecological sustainability and food security—hunters' current main concern. It simulates the mosaic of activities that indigenous people perform in the wet and dry season, while also allowing for specific hunting strategies. Socio-economic conditions change while the game unfolds, opening up to emerging alternative potential scenarios suggested by the stakeholders themselves. Do hunters give up hunting when given the opportunity of an alternative income and protein source? Do institutional changes affect their livelihoods? We played the game between October and December 2016 with 39 players—all of them hunters—from 9 different communities within the Ticoya reserve. Our results show that providing alternatives would decrease overall hunting effort, but impacts are not spatially homogenous. Legalizing trade could lead to overhunting except when market rules and competition come into place. When it comes to coupled human-nature systems, the best way forward to produce socially just and resilient conservation strategies might be to trigger an adaptive process of experiential learning and scenario exploration. The use of games as “boundary objects” can guide stakeholders through the process, eliciting the plurality of their strategies, their drivers and how outside change affects them

A new geography of preferences for Sub-Saharan African countries in a globalizing trading system

Trade between developing countries, or South-South trade, has been growing rapidly in recent years following significant reductions in tariffs. However, significant barriers remain, and there is currently reluctance among many developing countries to undertake further reductions. In addition African countries and in particular least developed African countries are still marginal players in this reframing of geography of trade. The erosion of preferential access to Northern markets remains their major concern and the status quo in multilateral liberalization could be seen as a desirable scenario. This emphasis on developed countries markets, principally Europe and the US, is likely to represent a missed opportunity for African countries. Unless those countries are granted broader preferences by the European Union and other developed countries, especially in agriculture, significant gains would be obtained from trade preferences provided by other developing countries. To assess this we compare the potential effects of the removal of barriers on trade between African countries and other developing countries with the gains from developed country liberalization. A general equilibrium model containing information on preferential bilateral tariffs is used to estimate the impacts

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure