The four world food organizations

The four world food organizations Influence of the Group of 77

Ross B. Talbot Since late 1977, there have been four world food organizations functioning in Rome. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was first headquartered in Washington, DC, but moved to Rome in 1951. The World Food Program (WFP) began its operations in January 1963. The World Food Council (WFC), a product of the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974), became operational in early 1975. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), also a child of the World Food Conference, did not begin to function until late 1977, for reasons which will be reviewed later. The main objective of this article is to describe and explain the relative influence of the Group of 77 (G77) in the decision making processes of each of these organizations. l My general thesis is: the relative influence of the G77 is based on the contemporary structure of power within a particular world food organization, and there are fairly marked differences between the organizations. 2 The essential strategy of G77 is redistributionist (ie the ideology of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States). The Keywords: International organizapower structure, however, is asymmetrical, to their disadvantage. Overtions; Food politics; NIEO stated, the Group of 77 (not including its rich OPEC members) has the The author is with the Department of votes, but the OECD and wealthy OPEC member states have the money. Political Science, Iowa State UniverSuch products as coffee, sugar, cocoa, and tea, not to mention tin, sity, 504 Ross Hall, Ames, IA 50011, bauxite, uranium, et al, are possible sources of countervailing power, but USA. none is a surrogate for modem industry (rural as well as urban) and oil. ‘Between September 1979 and July 1980, I When the Group decides to engage in symbolic politics it usually wins was on faculty leave, living in Rome, and engaged in studying the political processes (having the votes). But rhetoric leads, as its best, to substance. When the and policies of these four world food Group decides to engage in instrumental politics - the three Ps of policy, organizations. a different set of political realities comes into 4 will use the Cox and Jacobson definition program, and project-then of influence, namely: ‘. influence means play. Those involved in the policy making process must seek to underthe modification of one actor’s behavior by stand the structure of power within an international food organization in that of another’, although I will view actors more often as coalitions rather than as terms of what it has been, is now, and has the potential to become. individuals (Robert W. Cox and Harold K. Exogenous factors (eg world weather conditions) and endogenous factors Jacobson et al, The Anatomy of Influence: (eg the personalities and abilities of the principal political actors) conMaking in Decision International Organizations, Yale University Press, New tinually recast institutional power structures. This is, admittedly, well Haven, 1973). known by the leadership of G77, but one principal argument here will be The influence of the Group of 77 (G77) within the four world food organizations in Rome is limited. The structure of power and the policy making process within each organization varies rather considerably, but in each of them G77 has neither the resources, inforunity nor leadership mation, needed to play a very influential role. The international economy is presently in a state of doldrums, and the Group of T7 is struggling, not without some success, to maintain the status quo within the world food organizations that it established during the 1970s.

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The four world food organizations

that three leaders need more current, sophisticated informational and analytical sources at their command to calculate their strengths and limitations within each world food organization more accurately, and so more realistically. Regarding kinds of influence, I will later discuss those identified by Cox and Jacobson: initiator, vetoer, controller, and broker.3 But, as they stipulate, these kinds (strategies) of influence must fit into the calculus of power which then prevails in a particular international organization. Before examining the organization and strategies of the Group of 77, two questions need to be posed and briefly answered: who are the influential actors, and what are the principal agenda issues? In responding to the first question, we need to remember the admonition of Harold Jacobson, ‘International organizations . . . are new types of political institutions. However much they may resemble governments, they are not governments, and they only partially share the characteristics of govemments’.4 A general definition, within our context, might be that an international (food) organization is a comprehensive aggregation of nation states, organized collectively, seeking their respective national interests relative to agriculture, food and rural development issues, and doing so often through the formation of coalitions founded on ideology and interest, and through the services of a permanent international bureaucracy. Within that contextual definition, the principal coalitions of political actors are: the Group of 77 (I will differentiate later), the OECD member states (the European Economic Community, Nordic nations, Commonwealth nations, USA, and Japan as subgroups), Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), OPEC (principally, Arab OPEC), China, Yugoslavia, the Permanent Representatives in Rome of the member states and their representative (national capitol) delegations, the head of the international food bureaucracy (Director-General in FAO, President and the Executive-Director in WFC, the Executive Director of FAO, President and the Executive-Director in WFC, the Executive Director of WFP, and the President of IFAD), including the influential members of those bureaucracies, representatives of participating international organization (World Health Organization (WHO), International Labor Organization (IAO), UNCTAD, International Wheat Council (IWC), in particular) - and the influential non-govemmental organizations (NGOs such as the International Federation of Agricultural Producers). Concerning the matter of issues which are involved in the policy making process, I must be selective and will concentrate on two types: (1) budgets, pledges and spending, and (2) the initiation and ratification of new policies and programmes, and the evaluation, continuation and improvement of ongoing policies and programmes. Within that kind of selective background, I will examine the relative influence of G77 inside each world food organization. The examination will necessarily be based on generalizations, supported episodically sometimes, through observation, interview, and analysis of documents.

Organization Vbid, pp 12-l 4. 4 Harold K. Jacobson, Networks of hferdependence, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1979, p. vi.

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and ideology

The Group of 77 (now composed of some 120 Third World member nations) was founded in Geneva in 1974 as an outgrowth of UNCTAD I. Since then the UNCTAD bureaucracy has been viewed by G77 as its FOOD POLICY August 1982

The four world food organizations

5See Ref 6Roberl

1. F. Meagher, An International Redistribution of Wea/th and Power, Pergamon Press, New York, 1979, p 37. ‘Ibid, p 176.

FOOD POLICYAugust 1982

particular instrument, analytical source, advocate, and database. The Group’s branch in Rome (other branches are in New York and Vienna) is a very small operation (three or four permanent personnel, primarily auxiliary), housed in a two-room suite of offices in FAO’s Building A, which is primarily the conference building and includes FAO’s library. The member states of the Group in Rome have a rotating chairmanship, elected every six months, rotating by region (Africa-Ghana, Asia-India, Latin America-Venezuela, during my stay in Rome$ a Near East member presumably assumed that position in October 1980). Each region also elects a coordinator, so the five members function, rather loosely, as a kind of coordinating committee. Caucuses are held, rather frequently when major meetings are in progress, on the call of the chairman, and are held in one of FAO’s conference rooms (Red or Green) in Building A, usually just before an important meeting of one of the four world food organizations. These meetings, which are essentially caucuses, are - unfortunately but understandably - closed sessions, and so outsiders are not permitted to attend. Simultaneous language translation is provided, necessarily of course. The tone and tenor of these strategy sessions seem to depend on the world food situation and on which nation is in the chair. During most of my sojourn in Rome, the chairman of G77 was the Permanent Representative from India, and he quite definitely tended to view FAO and the other world food organizations in their technical and administrative roles, rather than as political instruments. His perspective was clearly on the side of the non-politicization of their activities. When the Venezuelan Permanent Representative assumed the chairmanship, the ideological rhetoric became more evident but even then he was usually much more restrained than, for example, the members of the Mexican delegation. In the latter instance, all the members of the delegation (a fair-sized contingent of some five or six) were young, aggressive, articulate, and heavily ideological in their rhetoric, but not really very effective (and they did not seem to expect to be). When watching the Group in action, an observer is often hard pressed to distinguish rhetoric from reality. The rhetoric is heavily oriented towards the redistributive ideology founded in the New International Economic Order and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States. According to Robert Meagher, the Charter ‘. . . embodies the past achievements, current activities, and future hopes of the Third World.‘6 Presumably so, but the Group of 77 is not a monolithic, monistic political organization, by any means. The principal opposition is obviously the OECD nations, although there seems to be an everincreasing tendency to needle the CMEA nations for their rationalizing neglect of the Third World. Oddly, at least based on first observations, G77 accepts the OPEC members as brothers within-the-fold, although once in a while a circumspect comment is made about the heavy financial burdens caused by the ever-increasing, if not exponentially increasing, oil prices. Meagher believes ‘the Group of 77 has benefitted enormously from the ideological and material support of the OPEC countries.” That may be a valid proposition, but personal observations led me towards a different interpretation. OPEC was, at first, a natural partner, and later came to have immense potential for becoming a ‘rich uncle’. Moreover, and importantly, OPEC had challenged and won over the OECD nations; David is always the hero-Goliath receives his just deserts. But two Goliaths make

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for a different myth, and the new realities of world power are pushing the Group of 77 into a very difficult and awkward political position relative to OPEC. Who is the enemy? Whose interests are being served? Viewing the Group more in terms of its base of operations in Rome, the factors tending towards unity within that Third World organization are: its heavily redistributive, NIEO-based, ideology; a consensus that the OECD nations are neo-imperialistic and neo-colonial, viewed in terms of both economics and politics; and its poor staff work. The last point is certainly highly debatable, and my stand is based partly on fact, partly on deduction. The Group has no permanent secretariat with any useful kind of research capability, certainly not in Rome and apparently not even in Geneva. 8 The need for such a professional secretariat has often been discussed, even proposed, but never accepted.9 However, extensive, professional research would bring to the front many chinks in the ideological armour of G77; there may be unity in diversity up to a point, as many would contend, but a number of thoroughly researched studies, demarcating clearly the chinks, would surely create a disturbing element within the now-unified rhetoric. Even so, if economic, social and political development is the Group’s main objective, then a rhetoric undergirded by a rational evaluation of likely prospects and probable results seem to offer a preferred operational framework. Furthermore, there are some fairly clear and present factors which tend to create disunity within the ranks of the Group: diversity of economic interests; nations at different stages of economic development (most-seriously-affected to newly industrialized countries, not tomention Kuwait et al); political systems which cover the Cox and Jacobson gamut of mobilizing, authoritarian and (rarely) competitive; and the economics, cultural anthropology, and the politics of regionalism. Even so, and on balance, one must be impressed by the coherence of purpose of objectives of, and the tenacity of their pursuit by, the Group of 77.

Instrument

of influence

G77 at the World Food Conference, Rome, November 1974 It is neither possible nor necessary to review extensively the activities of G77 at the conference. Nevertheless, what happened there built the *in comparison, OECD is serviced by 548 agenda for the policies which would be pursued in the years to follow, and professionals, compared to the 243 who the Group was an active, although perhaps ineffectual, participant. In serve in UNCTAD. As an UNCTAD official commented rather cynically to me, when I brief, Weiss and Jordan were quite unimpressed by the Group’s performasked about a study which the World Food ance, both in terms of the quality of their proposals and the perceptives of Council had requested: ‘We already have their strategy.'0 Ambassador Martin’s account sheds light on the Group’s too much on our plates’. activities although he makes no particular judgement on the quality of its 9Dia/ogue of a New Order, ed Khadija Haq, Pergamon Press, New York, 1980, p 18 performance.11 PAN was, predictably, highly sympathetic with the and ch 4. Group of 77’s objectives and treated its activities with approval. l* lOThomas G. Weiss and Robert S. Jordan, For my purpose, the main importance of the World Food Conference The World Food Conference and Global Problem Solving, Praeger, New York, 1976, comes from the 19 substantive resolutions that were agreed, and the 22nd pp 81-64. (implementing) resolution which led to the setting up soon thereafter of “Edwin McC Martin, Conference Diplothe World Food Council and IFAD. What is important in this analysis is macy - A Case Study: The World Food Conference, Ro.me, 1974, Institute for the that these resolutions still constitute, by and large, the unfinished agenda Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown Univerfor the four world food organizations. That is, the Group of 77’s strategy sity, Washington, DC, 1979,passim. has been, in the main, to find ways and means to bring these resolutions to 12PAN, The (unofficial) Newspaper of the World Food Conference, edited and pubfull fruition. Interestingly, and in a much broader context, Meagher notes lished in Rome by OXFAM-England, 5-l 6 ‘from 1976 on, the Group made no new advances.‘13 The ‘full plate’ November 1974, passim. metaphor comes again to mind; the Group of 77’s struggle has been ‘SMeagher, op tit, Ref 6, p 175.

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motivated more by its desire to fully implement the resolutions which are ‘on the books’, rather than proposing new directions and innovations. Ambassador Martin stresses another important point: resolutions forthcoming from international conferences are loaded with ‘non-committal operative phrases’ (‘requests’, ‘calls on’, ‘invites’, etc). The strongest verb, ‘resolves’, he notes, was used only three timesI which underlines a well known but often neglected truth: this is a world of sovereign nation states, interdependency not to the contrary. G77in the WFC

14Martin, op tit, Ref 11, p 5. ‘SMartin Kriesberg, international Organizations and Agricultural Development,USDAFAER 131, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, February 1981, p 21. 16World Food Council, Report of the Preparatory Meeting for the Sixth Session, WFC/1980/13,2 May 1980.

FOOD POLICYAugust 1982

As noted previously, World Food Conference Resolution 22(4) provided ! for the establishment of a World Food Council. The Secretary General of that conference (Sayed Marei, of Egypt) had proposed that a World Food Authority should be set up, with sufficient power to permit it to carry out a fairly extensive mandate. The Group of 77 was divided, while the industrial nations, excepting possibly Sweden and Norway, were strongly opposed. What proved acceptable, finally, was an organization with far more power to propose and educate than to legislate. Martin Kriesberg states the matter succinctly and accurately: ‘The Council is not an operating agency, but rather a forum and mechanism for initiating ideas and reviewing the work of other international organizations with operating programs.‘ls The UN General Assembly elects, upon nominations from the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the 36 countries who are to represent the principal geographic regions. Nine members are from Africa, eight from Asia (counting Japan), and another seven from Latin American states. So the Group of 77 has nearly two-thirds of the votes, not even counting the likely support of the four Eastern European members. But voting, in any of these organizations, is an extreme rarity. At the first two World Food Council meetings, and the first one in particular, the Group of 77’s strategy was strident and disruptive, but these tactics were self-defeating and the following (six) meetings were more sedate and orderly affairs. The agenda for each conference is heavily influenced by the President of the Council and, in particular, the Executive Director, with guidance and direction from the resolutions agreed to at the prior conference. Each conference is preceded, by some 45 days or so, by a Preparatory Meeting, and at its April 1980 session the desires of most of the G77 delegations were quite clear. As the Group’s chairman said at that meeting: ‘Ever since the World Food Council started its activities, the Group of 77 has hoped that the preparatory meeting would play a more significant role than it has to date.‘16 In essence, G77 desires a longer preparatory meeting, one that will culminate in an official report, with the report enunciating positive and relatively extensive policy proposals. However, the Executive Director (Maurice Williams) views the Preparatory Meeting as a briefing session. The world food situation is reviewed, the Secretariat’s policy proposals (its own product to an extent, but often with considerable professional assistance from FAO and consultants) are presented and discussed. No reporting committee is appointed. One can understand, to a degree, the frustrations and disappointments of the Group, although the World Food Council’s accomplishments thus far have not been negligible. Considering the size of the Secretariat (some 29, in mid 1980, incuding secretaries) the forward-planning strategy of the Council has been impressive. My criticism would be that the pro-

The four world food organizations

posals tend towards the utopian, although the Executive Director’s view is distinctly to the contrary. He takes very seriously the World Food Conference mandate contained in the Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, and certainly the Secretariat’s proposals are forward looking, imaginative, and constructive. As viewed by the Group, the central problem is that, after all these extensive preparations and ambitious proposals, very little happens at the subsequent World Food Council. Upon reading the final report of a World Food Council Meeting, one concludes that it is much like a restatement, in brief, of the World Food Conference Resolutions. In terms of winners and losers, one can be sympathetic with the Group of 77’s moderately aggressive demands at recent sessions of the Preparatory Meetings that there should be a report which would be positive and forthrightly committal, and especially so as it would relate to the avowed responsibilities of the rich nations. The contention of the present Executive Director is that the World Food Council’s mandate is underpinned by the aforementioned declaration and the Secretariat’s, that his primary responsibility is to advance policies and programmes which would probably fulfil that mandate. In his judgement, seminal questions of political acceptability and feasibility are to be decided by each subsequent meeting of the WFC, and not by the delegates (usually permanent representatives in Rome) who conduct a preliminary review of those proposals at the preparatory meeting. It is true, of course, that the Ministers of Agriculture (and, occasionally, Ministers of Planning-Development-Finance) from G77 member states could adopt a more belligerent and demanding posture at the WFC sessions, as was done in 1975. Since then, however, G77 strategy has been decidedly more reiterative and conciliatory. G77 in FAO FAO is the oldest, the largest, and the most powerful of the world food organizations. However, one should keep in mind that, compared to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), it is still a relatively small operation - some 5000 personnel in FAO as compared to more than 122000 in the USDA, and size-of-budget comparisons would disclose roughly the same ratio. The Director-General (the ‘D-G’) is certainly the centre of power in this organization. Since the election of Edouard Saouma to that office in November 1975 the Group of 77 has a D-G who often and vigorously espouses the ideology of the New International Economic Order. There is, to be sure, a constitutional obligation for him to uphold those actions and decisions of the UN General Assembly, and I have no cause to question his motivations or personal ideology. I would simply note that the opening sentence in a document issued and discussed at the 20th (1979) FAO Conference (FAO In the New Zntemational Economic Order) states his current political commitment succinctly and positively: ‘Ever since the adoption of the UN General Assembly of the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, FAO has continued to play an important role in the endeavours of the international community to establish the NIEO in the field of food and agriculture’.17 And the document continues for over eleven pages to detail FAO’s contributions to the pursuit of NIEO’s goals “Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO in the New InternationalEconomic Order, Conference - 20th Session, C79/33, FAO, Rome, October 1979, p. 1.

212

and

strategies

Also, the D-G incurred a special obligation to the Group of 77 at the 19th FAO Conference in 1977 when those member states were instruFOOD POLICYAugust 1982

The four world food organizations

mental in revising FAO’s constitution so that the Director-General is now eligible for re-election. Even so, and as previously stated, an international organization is not a government. It has no taxing power; the funds come from the rich nations and this is the restraining factor - some would say the obstacle - which neither the D-G nor the Group of 77 has been able to overcome. Table 1 which is a summary of FAO’s budget for 19SO41 (a two-year budget), illustrates a few aspects of the politics of funding in an international organization. The ‘Regular Programme’ budget of $271600000 is the one acted on at the Conference. The item for ‘United Nations Sources’ means, primarily, funds from the UN Development Program; ‘other sources’ refers, by and large, to World Bank funds and trust funds (the latter are, for example, fund arrangements between Sweden and FAO for special projects). My point is that the D-G has had to negotiate with the rich nations (meaning, of course, the OECD in large part) as to ‘what the traffic will bear’ for the next biennium. Furthermore, and overlooking the different types of negotiations involved, funds from UN sources, World Bank and trust funds are, in the final analysis, also predominantly from rich nations. The coming of OPEC into the world financial scene is altering those generalizations to an extent, but its influence is just beginning to be felt within the world food organizations. In any respect, the Table1.Programmeofworkandbut&etfor1990-91. Regular programme Chapter and major programme

199941 baae

1990-81 Bud9et funds

% General policy and direction Governing bodies Policy, direction and planning Legal Liaison

6060 4533 2064 4 676

Total, Chapter 1

17366

Technical and economic pmgrammes Agricutture Fisheries Forestry

Total, chapter 2

%

2.9 2.1 1.0 2.2

370 100 (79) -

6.2

391

(dm*) -

Total fwds 19w-91 % so00

1443 1016 419 769

7693 5649 2464 5447

2.9 2.1 .9 2.0

2716 211 251

7693 6365 2615 5696

.9 1 .o .3 .7

17746

3647

21 393

7.9

3179

24 571

29

94 261 16261 11006

34.7 6.0 4.1

415923 64766 53011

510 204 61 069 64019

59.9 9.5 7.5

44.9

633722

656292

76.9

6450 4633 1965 4 676

73 395 12314 6591

34.9 5.9 4.1

5327 1004 500

76 722 13316 9091

15559 2963 1917

94399

44.9

6931

101 131

29439

121579

Developmentsuppotipmgrarnmes Field programme planning and liaison Investment Special programmes FAO representatives Programme management

2367 11300 1766 12647 436

Total, Chapter 3

28569

1.1 5.4 .9 6.0 .2

260 100

2667 11400 1466 15047 466

547 1906 235 5477 100

3214 13305 1723 20 524 566

13.6

31 999

9264

39364

25606

12.2

27 265

5 373

Information and documentation Administration Programme Management

10365 21 957 733

4.9 10.5 .3

10 725 22690 606

Total, Chapter 5

33 075

15.7 5.2

1.2 4.9 .6 7.6 .2

6466 13733 337 1469 450

0 702 27036 2060 21 993 1036

1.1 3.2 .2 2.6 .l

14.5

22477

61 931

7.2

32636

-

-

32636

3.6

2562 6244 269

13267 29134 1077

4.9 10.7 .4

4363 10896 1776

17640 40632 2 655

2.1 4.7 .3

34423

9 075

43498

16.0

17929

69 527

7.1

11495

1112

12607

4.6

4514

17 121

2.0

606

.l

Suppoft services

10660 Contingencies Grand Total

400

.2

210 169

169.0

Source: FAO - 20th Conference. C79/3. 1979, p 40.

FOOD POLICY August 1982

600 223769

666 47 910

271 699

.2 lat.0

666929

962599

199.0

July

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The four world food organizations

IsAfter numerous negotiating sessions, the D-G did work out a compromise which proved acceptable to the major parties involved. The Cairo offi was closed ‘temporarily but not moved. ‘Essential’ programmes were to bs administered from Rome. Saudi Arabia contributed one million dollars to pay for moving costs and personnel expenses. ‘9Food and Agriculture Organization, Directory of FAO Statutory Bodies and Pane/s of Experts, FAO, Rome, 1978.

214

Group of 77 has been able to exercise a very minimal amount of leverage at this vital point. The developing nations are at the mercy, so to speak, of the rich nations in terms of ‘taxing’ and spending. Of course, an FAO Conference is not just a brief budget session. It lasts for three long, meeting-packed, weeks. The first week is in part set aside for endless accounts by national ministers of agriculture, relating all of their accomplishments and aspirations. Surely a review of their achievements would lead one to conclude quickly that there is no world food problem! But the hard work at the Conference centres around money and programmes, past, present, and future. More specifically, the main documents under scrutiny are: Review of Field Programmes, 1978-1979; Review of The Regular Programme, 1978-1979; and, in particular, The Director-General’s Programme of Work and Budget for 198&81 - as viewed, of course, from the political perspectives of the delegates who participated in the 20th Conference in November 1979. In truth, the Conference strikes at least one outside observer as a too large, too well staged, too elaborate overview session. It does, however, provide an informational and educational function which should not be denied. The several Assistant Director-Generals, and often the division heads, are there to defend what they have been doing and what they propose to do. They field the repetitious questioning with professional and bureaucratic skill, and then go on to the next agenda item. I intend no criticism of G77’s chairman by noting that he performed his prescribed role well (ie largely in silence). The Programme of Work and Budget was mildly criticized, but the outcome was really foreordained; hardly a figure or a comma was changed. There was one very controversial, potentially dangerous issue. The Arab OPEC nations desired to close FAO’s regional office in Cairo, and to transfer that office to some ‘acceptable’ location, apparently Iraq, although that may have been only rumour. On the other hand, the OECD position, spiritedly advanced and defended by the USA, was that the regional office should not be closed, and would not be moved. This issue produced some very tense moments; constitutionally it could have been decided by a floor vote, but few delegations desired that kind of a confrontation, and perhaps least of all the Group of 77. I was told that the Group of 77 never caucussed, regarding this controversy, and for a significant reason: there was no reasonable likelihood that a consensus could ever be reached. In the words of a prominent G77 official, ‘we had good friends on both sides of this very dangerous issue.‘16 If viewed as a kind of holding company for committees, FAO could then be defined as an international organization in continuous committee session. FAO publishes a Directory of FAO Statutory Bodies And Panels of Experts. I9 and a count of only the statutory bodies came to 104, which would only be the tip of the committee iceberg. By and large these committees, especially on the lower end of the hierarchy, tend to be highly technical (Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues, for example). As reports and resolutions move up the committee hierarchy, they tend to become increasingly political, although I should not overstress their political nature. As another and typical example, the Intergovernmental Group on Oilseeds, Oils, and Fats meets, usually, once a year. That committee’s reports move on to the Committee on Commodities, from there to the next FAO Council session, and then sometimes on to the Conference. As indicated earlier, one principal difficulty that the Group of 77 has throughout the movement up the committee ladder is its almost FOOD POLICY August 1982

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total lack of an intelligence capacity. For better or worse, G77 could politicize some of these lower-level sessions in pursuit of NIEO objectives, but for the most part the rich nations dominate the sessions and the final reports, primarily through default. In one meeting of the Committee on Commodities I attended, an issue did become highly political at the instigation of, and under the leadership of, the Group of 77. Trade protectionism was the issue and the European Economic Community was the primary target, to the rather bemused surprise of the US delegation. The delegate from Bangladesh was the floor leader for the Group, and he obviously relished the assignment. At one point he so angered the French Ambassador that the French delegation left the conference room. However, one has to remember that drafting committees and contact groups are negotiating tools at a committee meeting of an international organization, and upper middle-level FAO officials have become superior craftsmen at that art. By the time this committee acted on its final report, the charge of flagrant protectionism (according to the rhetoric, just one more, vicious form of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism) had become so obfuscated that numerous, equally plausible, interpretations would be quite posible regarding the subtle references to protectionism therein. Nor did I observe many signs of leadership by the Group at two FAO Council meetings. At the May 1979 meeting of the Council there had been a virtiolic exchange of words between the Syrian and Egyptian delegates, a quite shocking affair by FAO’s usually gentleman-like standards of courtesy and decorum. Again, the Group of 77 was no more than a silent observer. Frankly, I anticipated some verbal fireworks at three important committee meetings - Forestry, Fisheries, and World Food Security. But in each case the Group of 77’s role was muted, nearly to the point of non-existence. The developing nations have a considerable stake in the world food security issue, but the sessions of this committee were models of frustration in that the issue of a new International Grains Agreement, with teeth, has been in the process of negotiation since late 1974, with no accord yet in sight. A new and improved Food Aid Convention had been agreed to, and that accomplishment was duly praised, but neither the International Wheat Council nor UNCTAD has proved to be an effective forum for reconciliation, although the frustrating endeavours continue. In the case of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) there was a good deal of discussion concerning the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) issue, and FAO’s Department of Fisheries is trying to push this issue into a toppriority position, and justifiably so. Nevertheless, there is a coastallandlocked nation split here within the Group, but what seemed to be of much more consequence was the varying interpretations of the word ‘exclusive’. The signs of brotherly love were not in evidence:. ‘what is mine is mine’, claimed the nations with abundant coastlines. Relative to the sessions of the Forestry Committee, one has forced to conclude that the Worldwatch Institute had been far more on fire over the forestland destruction issue than had the Group of 77. And at some earlier sessions of a subgroup on tropical forests there were few indications that the concept of impending scarcity had yet to become a significant political issue. G77 in the WFP The World Food Programme FOOD POLICYAugust 1982

(WFP) formally began its operations on 1

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January 1963. Nearly all its ‘income’ is in the form of food, which is pledged every two years by donor countries - meaning OECD nations, although Saudi Arabia now pledges $50 million in cash. The food is ‘appropriated’, through projects, to the developing nations by action of an Intergovernmental Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes (referred to as CFA-the Committee on Food Aid), primarily for development projects (human resources, infrastructure, production, and resettlement). At the World Food Conference, 10 million tons was set as the annual food-aid target: this has yet to be attained There are 28 member states on CFA, half elected by ECOSOC and the other half by the FAO Council. Fourteen of the nations are also members of the Group of 77,12 are members of OECD nations, and the other two members are (in 1979430) Saudi Arabia and Hungary. To a minor, but not unimportant, degree the agenda for each CFA meeting (two are held each year) is decided on at the previous session of CFA, usually in the form of special studies to be presented at the following CFA meeting. More specifically, the agenda is composed of projects, new, revised, terminated, and emergency. Project proposals come from a variety of sources, but primarily they are a product of negotiations which are initiated between the WFP officer located in a developing nation (he may service more than one) and the government of the developing nation. The WFP bureaucracy, under the leadership of the ExecutiveDirector, contains the principal political actors. This is a difficult and complex political assignment in that the pledges come from one coalition of nation states (OECD, heavily) while the projects are exclusively located in another coalition (G77). Formally, however, there seems to be only minor evidence that G77, as a political entity, is operational in the CFA sessions. The informal political leadership for G77, at least in the two sessions I observed, seemed to come predominantly from the South Asian nations (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), but this generalization should certainly not be interpreted in such a way to exclude ‘interventions’ (a favourite word, especially in FAO meetings) from Group members in Africa, Latin America or other Asian countries. To exemplify the politics of income and allocation, which are the central concern of the WFP bureaucracy and the Committee on Food Aid, I have chosen a section from two reports. The first is from the final report of the 9th Session of CFA, and reads as follows: The Committee on Food Aid viewed with concern the unsatisfactory situation regarding WFP’s resources. Only 78 percent of the target of voluntary pledges for the current biennium (197940) had been reached by the end of 1979. Food Aid Convention (FAC) contributions channelled through the Programme continued to represent not more than five percent of total FAC food aid grains. Contributions to the International Emergency Food Reserve (IEFR) in 1979 were only 62 percent of its established annual level of 500,000 tons, less than in 1978, of which 28 percent had been channelled bilaterally rather than placed at the Programme’s disposal.20

ZoWorld Food Programme, Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes, Annual Repoti of the Executive Director . .:7979,9th Session, Rome, 14-25 April i 980, WFP/CFA:9/4, February 1980, p 2. ZlThe first pledging target, for 1967-68, was $100 million in food aid. The figure has risen incrementally each subsequent biennium, reaching $950 million for 1979-80.

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A word of background. The pledging target for 1979430 which is actually the Executive Director’s ‘wishing’ figure, ratified by CFA - had not been met;zl nor had the annual goal of 500000 tons for the International Emergency Food Reserve. What the report implies by the phrase ‘the Committee viewed with concern’ is that the OECD nations, in particular, h ave

failed to live up to their commitments and responsibilities. This is

obviously the viewpoint of the developing nations, although at least two of the major OECD nations (the USA and West Germany) had made

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known their concern over what they viewed as an overly ambitious pledging target for 1979-1980. This is a classic case of the complexities involved in the politics of redistribution. The second quotation was chosen to show that the politics of allocation is the reverse side of the politics of appropriation: Total WFP commitments for 53 new development projects approved during 1979 amounted to $463 million. This compares with the Programme’s commitments to development projects of $342 million in 1978 and $312 million in 1977. WF’P has further concentrated its assistance on priority countries and projects. Over 90 percent of development assistance approved in 1979 was for projects in the least developed and MSA countries, compared with 76 percent in 1978. Seventy-nine percent of total development commitments went to projects designed to increase agricultural, and especially food, production and to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable groups.22

Z2World Food Programme, Report of the Ninth Session, 14-25 April 1980, WFP/ CFA:9/19, May 1980.

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In this instance the WFP bureaucracy is attempting a delicate balancing act. The OECD constantly advocates a kind of basic-needs strategy; ie food aid should be allocated to the poorest nations. The developing nations accept that proposition as a kind of half-truth, but claim that some of the ‘poorest of the poor’ also live in the lower middle-income nations, and even in the newly industrialized countries (the NICs). Also implicit, although never articulated formally, is the lurking, perturbing suspicion of G77 members that the OECD nations’ concern over the poverty nations, and their advocacy of a basic-needs philosophy, is really just another divide-and-rule strategy. Moreover, the WFP bureaucracy must not only perform that balancing act, but it must also keep firmly in mind the need to propose projects which also convey a fairly close semblance to regional balance - Asia v Latin America v Near East. Another source of major concern, both to the WFP bureaucracy and to the Committee on Food Aid, has been the steady rise in WFP emergency operations from 1972 to 1979: from 15 to 67 operations, from 13 countries to 41, at a total cost which has escalated from $10.6 million to $119.2 million during that period. This steadily upward trend perturbs the WFP officials because they do not desire to have the World Food Programme viewed primarily as an international organization involved in emergency food operations. For my purposes, however, I will use this issue to discuss briefly another political controversy. Remember that the 500000 ton IEFR target has never been met. Administratively and ultimately politically, this means that WFP has to meet the emergency (refugee) demand from its regular resources - a kind of deficit financing. Consequently, the FAO Director-General (he must approve all WFP emergency proposals) recommended, at the March 1980 meeting of CFA, the transformation of the International Emergency Food Reserve from a voluntary contribution agreement into a legally binding international convention. This would mean, in essence, that the OECD nations, primarily, would become obligated by international law to appropriate, in kind or cash, the targeted 500000 tons of food grains. The debate over this proposed legally binding IEFR was extensive in the meeting of the Committee on Food Aid in October of last year. The general thrust and parry in the debate was quite predictable: the OECD nations strongly preferred a voluntary IEFR; G77 just as fervently supported a mandatory IEFR. The outcome was, of course, a stalemate.

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G77 in IFAD

z3Weiss and Jordan, op tit, Ref 10, pp 61-

63.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was, as noted above, one of the major accomplishments of the World Food Conference. Apparently the genesis of the Fund idea came from Arab OPEC countriesz3 Certainly, the proposal had political importance to them symbolically; perhaps they were even concerned that substantively this kind of a funding arrangement was genuinely necessary, if rural and agricultural development of any meaningful consequence was to take place in the poverty nations. Furthermore, the proposal received an important impetus through the enthusiastic endorsement, and active campaigning on the Funds’ behalf, of the WFC’s Secretary General, Sayed Marei, a prominent Egyptian political leader. There was some foot-dragging on the part of the US delegation but in fact Resolution XIII only verified that the Fund had been agreed to as an operational concept. The actual negotiations (who, what, when, how much) were postConference, and the Fund did not actually become a functioning reality until December 1977.24 Moreover, the role of the Group in this formulation stage is unclear. Assuredly, there was some considerable support from the developing nations; on the other hand, as one delegate noted, ‘. . . OPEC “imperialism” is not preferable to older varieties’.25 The negotiations for setting up the Fund were very protracted, although not because of the interventions of the Group of 77.26 The formal Agreement Establishing The Fund For Agricultural Development entered into force on the last day of November 1977, and IFAD’s Lending Policies and Criteria were agreed to at the December 1977 meeting of the Governing Council (all countries who have contributed to the Fund are members). However, one indisputable conclusion can be declared concerning the decision making process in IFAD: the Executive Board is the real court of last resort, not the Governing Council, which is really a rather interesting three-day, public relations affair. In consequence, what happens in the Executive Board is crucial, but these meetings are decidely executive - not even a member of IFAD’s professional bureaucracy may attend unless he/she has been directly involved in preparing the project proposals. In essence, however, the real decision makers are the top-level officials in the IFAD bureaucracy. My interviews furnished convincing evidence that the Executive Board sessions were lively, penetrating and occasionally critical. After the final decision was made, however, it became manifest that the bureaucracy’s proposals had been accepted, although one or two project proposals had been held over to the next meeting, and there were apparently a very few strong ‘no more proposals like this one’ admonitions. Thus principal emphasis must be placed on this observation: no vote has ever been taken in an Executive Board meeting (at least up to mid 1981). Quite elaborate voting procedures, for various purposes, are prescribed in the aforementioned Agreement. Nevertheless, consensus is the governing procedure. One dilemma, probably the major political dilemma confronting both IFAD’s bureaucracy and G77, is Article 7, Section l(d) of the Agreement.

24Ros.s B. Talbot, ‘The International Fund for Agricultural Development’, Political This reads: Science Quarterly,Summer 1960, pp 261277 Ti&eiss and Jordan, op tit, Ref 10, p 61. In allocating its resources the Fund shall be guided by the following priorities: WECD member states pledged $567 mil(i) the need to increase food production and to improve the nutritional level of lion (57%), OPEC members $435 million

(43%), of a total pledge of slightlyover $1

billion.

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(ii)

the poorest populations in the poorest food deficit countries; the potential for increasing food production in other developing countries.

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Likewise, emphasis shall be placed on improving the nutritional level of the poorest populations in these countries and the conditions of their lives.

Ideologically, IFAD’s bureaucracy is strongly inclined to seek out projects which would be likely to assist ‘the poorest populations in the poorest food deficit countries’, but the political facts of life are that all developing countries desire, expect, even demand, economic assistance. IFAD, and G77, have a diversified constituency to serve. At present, and very probably for some months to come, the main political controversy within and encompassing IFAD will be with the replenishment issue. It was predicted that that organization would be almost ‘broke’ before the end of 1981. Here, again, the Group of 77 is really without significant countervailing power, unless one views Arab OPEC as a kind of vanguard of the proletariat. More on that matter is said in my concluding section. G77

*CROSS 6. Talbot, ‘Farm structure in the poverty nations: consensus and conflict at WCARRD’. paper delivered at the Farm Structure gid ’ Rural Policy Conference, Iowa State University, 20-22 October 1980. zaPA/V, The (unofficial) Newspaper of the World Conference on Agrarian Refom, and Rural Development, edited and published in Rome by OXFAM-England, 17 July 1979, p 8.

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at

WCARRD

The World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD), sponsored by FAO, was held in Rome in July 1979. There is still some uncertainty as to why it was called. The World Food Conference’s Resolution I did ‘call on’ the developing nations to ‘take measures for agrarian reform and progressive change in the social and economic structures and relationship in rural areas’, but there was no specific mandate to call a world conference to aid or assist this transformation. Nor, apparently, was the Director-General under any particular pressure from G77 to call such a conference. What seems to have happened is that he became convinced that this move would enhance his political stature with the developing nations and would also cement FAO’s status as the lead international agency in matters concerning land reform and rural development. 27 As is invariably true, there was a great deal of background, preparatory work done before WCARRD, but I was able to detect no significant influence by the Group of 77 over the building of the conference agenda. At one point, about midway through the conference, Horatio Mends, then chairman of G77, did take a strong and dramatic stand against a deluge of amendments intended to water down the Declaration.28 In summary, he told the OECD nations that the Group would accept no substantive amendments either to the Declaration of Principles or to the Programme of Action, then under consideration by a joint session of Commissions I and II. But the conference Report was far from a revolutionary document, although its tone and substance might qualify it for classification as a liberal, evolutionary reform charter. One ‘guideline and principle’ did state that ‘national progress based on growth with equity and participation requires a redistribution of economic and political power . . .‘, while another referred to the need for an ‘equitable distribution and efficient use of land, water and other productive resources. . . .‘, but consensus at an international conference is based on semantic ambiguities, circumlocutions and subtleties. The point at issue, however, concerns a report by the ‘Rome Declaration Group’ which conducted a kind of counter-conference, on a quite modest scale, at WCARRD. Led by such outstanding personages as Gunnar Myrdal and Hans Singer, and sparked by a study prepared by OXFAM-England, a group of ‘more than 100 scholars, activists and researchers’ (to quote from a headline in PAN) issued a document (The 219

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Rome Declaration) which, interestingly, damned the developing nations more than it did the industrial nations. According to the document, it was through this conference that ‘. . . governments hope to divert attention from themselves as causes of rural suffering by laying the blame elsewhere - on obstinate local rural elites, on the scarcity of funds, on unavoidable conflicts in priorities, on unfair terms of trade’. And the charge continued, ‘The function of this conference is to portray good intentions when in fact the intentions are to protect vested interests; to portray progress when in fact there is greater suffering; to portray as friends of the poor those actively involved in repressing them’.*9 A reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review wrote, ‘one reason the New International Economic Order was brought up at the meeting was its usefulness as a red herring to divert attention from developing countries’ domestic obstacles to rural change and development’.30 Further, he quoted Director-General Sauoma as follows: ‘As a pragmatist, if we can get governments to abide by even 5% of what they endorse, we’ll be happy’.31 Robin Sharp summarized the ‘radical argument’ very nicely: ‘Efforts directed towards agrarian reform and rural development cannot succeed and will almost certainly disadvantage the rural poor unless preceded by structural reforms, including redistribution of control over productive assets - particularly land, water and credit’. And, he continued, this was the ‘. . . line taken by all NGOs at the Conference, not only the radical academics and activists who banded together as signatories of a Rome Declaration on Agrarian Conflict’.32 To some extent the analysis of the Rome Declaration Group seems to be accurate and predictive. On the other hand, the counter-claims of the ‘establishment’ in a developing country would be that the rhetoric of politics is far simpler and more clear-cut than when those same issues are confronted with the realities of power. For our purpose, however, we return to the question of the influence of G77 at WCARRD; or, more accurately, their intentions and interests. WCARRD hardly left the sharp impression that the Group is an aggregation of red berets in action, but neither should one then surmise that it is a covenant of toothless tigers. Some intermediate kind of generalization seems to be much more viable. Quite likely a useful hypothesis would be that the Group is a fairly well knit collection, ideologically, of developing and sovereign nations, governed by elites, whose governments could then be plotted on a kind of dual continuum, one of effective/not effective, the other committed/noncommitted.

Conclusion

Vbid, 12 July 1979, p 2. 30Ho Kwan Ping, ‘Fighting a red Herring’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 July 1979, pp 45-46. 3Vbid, p 46. Wtobin Sharp, ‘A clash of ideologies on agrarian reform’, Food Policy, Vol4, No 4, November 1979, pp 306-307.

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What can be said in general as to the influence of the Group of 77 in these world food organizations? Modest, but not really impressive, seems like a fair, although too all encompassing, generalization. To return to the categories used by Cox and Jacobson, G77 has been fairly successful as initiators in setting the ideological agenda for FAO and, to a lesser degree, the World Food Council. However, the seminal issues embodied in NIEO (the Common Fund and international commodity agreements, as examples) are really not negotiated in those fora. The Group of 77 is often effective through ratifying the bureaucracy’s proposed programmes, but to some extent its accomplishment is chimerical. That is, the new programmes will certainly not suceed unless they are at least modestly FOOD POLICY August 1982

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33John Madeley, ‘UN Special Session Stalemate’, Food Policy, February 1981, pp 58-59. Commission on World 34Presidential Hunger (US), Repoft - Overcoming World Hunger: The Challenge Ahead, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, March 1980.

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funded, which (with exceptions) the OECD nations will not do. Within the World Food Programme, the Group’s project initiations (again, ratifying those of the WFP bureaucrcy) must necessarily be very modest because it has very little control over the essential resource ‘appropriated’ food. As a group of vetoers, G77 is surely more than toothless, but its vetoes are used primarily in the form of threats and obstructionist tactics aimed at the OECD nations. There, the problem is that the OECD strategy tends to be strongly reactive - not much is proposed, so not much can be vetoed. Again, G77 could be viewed as a set of controllers, in terms of its formal, constitutional power- ie votes. Even so, it is primarily negative in its control function. The Group does not control the essential resource (money), so the control, if it could properly be called that, is heavily in the form of petitioning, reasoning, subtle pleading, implicit threats. And such tactics are generally unimpressive in terms of their efficacy in international fora. Some of the members of G77 have become effective brokers as ‘. . . go-betweens among the participants and as consensus builders’, to use the Cox and Jacobson definition. Nevertheless, one must ask what does the brokering accomplish? The Group’s effectiveness in drafting committee, contact groups, and the like is impressive, but the end result tends to be a document - a committee report or resolution, usually - that is so broadly, if not ambiguously, phrased so that any OECD delegate will probably approve the wording. However, some very gradual incrementalism has taken place therein, and viewed over a number of years the increments add up to some modest achievements, measured in terms of the economic interests of the developing nations. One should not underestimate the potential political power of the Group of 77. It fought a good fight at the August-September 1980 Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Economic Development Issues.33 The compromise (Yugoslav) proposal was almost agreed to, at least in the Working Group. If the next attempt proves successful, and if the specific negotiations which would eventuate in the world food agencies could result in a modest and realistic consensus relative to the policies dealt with in the World Conference Resolutions, then there appears to be some hope for successful policy developments. On the other hand, we must face the realities in US national politics. The Reagan Administration and the 97th Congress are not going to believe that ‘overcoming world hunger’ is ‘the challenge ahead’.34 The Third Development Decade, if one is ever formally dedicated, is not necessarily d oomed, but it surely appears destined to be stalemated even before its inception. Optimism seems to be, predictably, the world’s most scarce commodity as we enter the 1980s.

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