| By :
Alison Withers
Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers The effectiveness and dangers of a free market economic model are coming under increasing scrutiny. Lack of regulation to curb the risks of financial speculation has been identified as one of the main causes of the current global economic crisis. It is worrying, however, that governments are still placing their faith in economic recovery on continuous economic growth. When times are hard, however, as they currently are at the end of 2010, this inevitably leads to arguments about currency values, trade balances and more, rather than less, economic competition between nations. While it may be understandable that governments whose countries are suffering most are tempted to protect their own national economic interests by putting pressure on those, like Chine, that are doing well, asking them to allow their currencies to float upwards, which would make export trade from countries like the US and UK more competitive compared to China. Of course it is inevitable that China would resist. Why should it agree to make itself less competitive to help bail out countries that have got themselves into a mess? It was not only China that resisted the pressure from the US to reduce trade imbalances at the recent G20 Finance summit, however. Germany, Japan and Russia also resisted. The danger is that as a result there will be moves to protect national currencies and economies by using mechanisms like trade tariffs and import restrictions and this has wider implications than just the global economic recovery. It is also preventing united global actions to try to halt the destruction of the world's biiodiversity as illustrated this week (October 23) in reports that talks in Nagoya,, Japan, aimed at setting acceptable targets to reduce biodiversity loss had stalled because of precisely those issues. And this is despite the fact it has been calculated that the rapid biodiversity loss across the planet is losing countries trillions of dollars every year and adding to the destructive effects of land use for biofuels and food production on ecosystems. Eminent economists, like Prof Joseph Stiglitz, argue that it is too narrow and ultimately dangerous to measure economic progress solely in terms of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). They argue that GDP should be qualified by measuring the impact of economic change in terms of sustainable development and social cohesion. Even worse, it impedes any kind of liberalisation of the regulation and wider distribution of those already-available farming techniques like low-chem agricultural products such as biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers that could contribute to sustainable farming and food production, turning them into yet another commodity that can be owned, priced high and then sold to only those who can afford them. These techniques being invented by the Biopesticides Developers should be widely available at an affordable level, backed by access to training, to all those involved in food production, whether they be small subsistence farmers in India and Africa or the larger agribusinesses. This short term, protectionist thinking ignores the fact that we all, everywhere, rely on the world's finite resources to ensure adequate food supplies for everyone. United we stand, divided we fall? It's a high price to pay to protect a national economy.
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