upton-on-line
6th April 2004
In this issue
France's regional elections as a new form of French exceptionalism,
saving the world's oceans in a sea of words and lessons from New
Zealand's agricultural liberalisation 15 years on.
March madness
The French Government has scored an undoubted first by making world
news out of its regional elections. This takes some doing even in
France. For New Zealanders it is unimaginable since regional government
is all but invisible. That was thought broadly to be the case here but
when the socialist opposition managed to capture 21 out of 22 regions
last Sunday even hardened Gaullists had to pinch themselves. (Only
Alsace survived in the hands of the right which seemed to evince a
certain Teutonic stubbornness at odds with the latin capriciousness of
the republic at large.)
In a land which treats politics as grand opera, there have been all
sorts of ritual declarations from balconies, fallings on swords and
sweeping gestures. The Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin,
handed in his resignation only to have it grandly rejected by the
President. Instead, senior Ministers exchanged chandelier-lit offices, a
bunch exited (including upton-on-line's favourite philosopher-education
minister, Luc Ferry) and even more new ones arrived. The best
bit, however, has been the packaging of the portfolios with a special
emphasis on appearing more 'social'. There is a mega-portfolio of
employment, work and social cohesion in the hands of Jean-Louis
Borloo. Sheltering under his wings are two associate ministers, one
responsible for 'the fight against insecurity and exclusion' (la précarité
et l'exclusion) and the other, deliciously, for 'integration and
equality of luck' (l'intégration et l'égalité des chances ...
well, ok, opportunities).
With verbal eiderdowns like these, who could entertain any fear of
being left out in the cold? Well, quite a few. Because with a ballooning
public debt, weak growth and a yawning budget deficit it would appear
that the Government's grip on events is somewhat précaire. The
only politician on the right to have emerged unscathed and smiling is
the dashing Nicolas Sarkozy who wants to be President. A tad too
unscathed for the current incumbent it would appear, who has decided to
make Sarkozy's future a little more précaire by giving him the
finance portfolio. It will take more than an equality of luck for this
infectiously ambitious - and superbly polished - politician to rescue
the day. There will be those who hope he will, nonetheless. After all,
if the only remaining place of exile in mainland France is Alsace, there
just won't be enough jobs to go around.
Saving the world's oceans (on paper at least)
There may be fewer fish in the seas these days, but do not worry; if
you dip your net into the ocean of verbiage that UN processes generate,
you will harvest riches beyond belief. The latest evidence of this may
be found in Resolution A/RES/58/240 of the UN General Assembly adopted
at its fifty-eighth session . The resolution issues from the annual
debate on Oceans and the Law of the Sea. It is a 79 paragraph triumph
preceded by 18 preambular paragraphs recalling, emphasising,
reaffirming, recognising, underlining and reiterating all manner of
previous callings, emphasisings, reaffirmations, recognitions and
underlinings.
Nothing is too insignificant to escape a verbal expression of
concern, emphasis or, in some gravely exciting cases, reiterated
emphasis! There is nothing, it seems, that cannot benefit from one or
several solutions drawn from the UN's verbal kitset. Without knowing
anything about the issues it would be possible to write a very
respectable recommendation by mixing and matching from some familiar
word sets. A manual for beginners might go something like this:
Select a verb: encourage, welcome, call upon, reiterate,
develop, consider, invite, strengthen;
Select an appropriate object: States, international
organisations, regional organisations, the Secretary-General; etc
Choose one or more solutions: co-operation, co-ordination,
consultation, integration, protection, preservation;
Add adjectival sharpener or softener: urgent, effective,
transparent, timely, relevant, intensified
Qualify with one of the following phrases: consistent with,
in accordance with, where appropriate, subject to, as recognised by
Rearrange as appropriate to secure consensus (and don't tell
the fish).
The triumph of process over substance
There will no doubt be those who will reproach upton-on-line with
being excessively cynical. In his defence, he notes that as Chairman of
the the 7th Session of the Commisssion on Sustainable Development in
1999, he fought long and hard to generate a way round the sterile way in
which oceans issues were addressed by the UN. 12 months lobbying
resulted in a recommendation to set up something called the UN Informal
Open-Ended Consultative Process on oceans and the law of the sea. The
idea was that there would be an annual consultation on one or two key
oceans issues that required the world's attention. Countries would
choose crunchy issues, examine them in detail and then provide the
General Assembly with some pithy analysis and maybe a recommendation or
two. The reason for doing this in a UN setting is that the oceans are
governed by international law and, on the High Seas, belong to no
country. Only genuinely inter-national action can make a difference.
Upton-on-line hadn't reckoned with the ability of UN-based
negotiators to reduce anything to a procedural treadmill. Not that he
wasn't warned! When NZ was invited to chair the session, upton-on-line
naively asked his MFAT advisers what we could expect to achieve in
chairing it. With a frankness disarming from an MFATic (a breed known
for the nuanced nature of its advice), the reply was
"Nothing". Horrified, upton-on-line suggested that we should
let our lucky Australian cousins chair the session but was mollified by
the sage advice of seasoned negotiators that 'nothing' was susceptible
to many interpretations and some were quite substantive.
So the quest for the Open-Ended Consultative Process began. The rest
is history. An apparent victory for candid debate has become a hatchery
for prosodic paralysis. Most of the time set aside for the
'consultation' is now occupied with negotiations over verbal formulae.
Try reading paragraph 52 of the resolution for example (readers are
advised to take a very deep breath and speak quickly):
52. Invites the relevant global and regional
bodies, in accordance with their mandates, to investigate urgently how
to better address, on a scientific basis, including the application of
precaution, the threats and risks to vulnerable and threatened marine
ecosystems and biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction; how
existing treaties and other relevant instruments can be used in this
process consistent with international law, in particular with the
Convention, and with the principles of an integrated ecosystem-based
approach to management, including the identification of those marine
ecosystem types that warrant priority attention; and to explore a
range of potential approaches and tools for their protection and
management; and requests the Secretary-General to cooperate and liase
with those bodies and to submit an addendum to his annual report to
the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session, describing the
threats and risks to such marine ecosystems and biodiversity in areas
beyond national jurisdiction as well as details on any conservation
and management measures in place at the global, regional, subregional
or national levels addressing these issues;
Upton-on-line's count is 175 words, with no full stops, eight commas
and four semi-colons. This is one of the reasons u-o-l is now assisting
five ministers with a staff of two and half and only three semi-colons
between them, to take a different approach to galvanising action against
illegal high seas fishing. It will take a couple of years. In the
meantime the task force would be pleased to hear from any subscribers
who note any change in the number of paragraphs caught by fishermen in
their region.
For readers gripped by paragraph 52 above, the full text can be found
at: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/general_assembly/general_assembly_resolutions.htm
A missionary position
Upton-on-line was invited recently to address the Société des
Agriculteurs de France on the subject of how New Zealand managed to
remove its agricultural subsidies. It was an invitation too delicious to
refuse despite the daunting requirement that the address and subsequent
questions be delivered in French. (This, it must be said, turned a
speech which would normally have presented the challenge of a standard
one morning talk into the sort of harrowing ordeal normally experienced
by hapless witnesses under cross-examination. Upton-on-line defies any Anglophone
to say liberalisation swiftly three times in a row...) It seemed a
golden opportunity to expose the holy grail to the infidels and effect a
miraculous conversion.
Such an ambition was somewhat shattered by the size of the audience -
20 people recovering from luncheon in an upper room. It was further
dashed when one of the number introduced himself as a frequent pilgrim
to the south seas shrine and an admirer of Ruth Richardson. It
started to feel more like the secret gathering of a banned sect. Most
subversive movements suffer a long night before the dawn and
upton-on-line had the strong feeling he had arrived only shortly after
midnight. But if giving heart to the heretics was what it was all about,
it was time well spent and the company, if select, was warm. Here are
the lessons upton-on-line drew from New Zealand agriculture's near-death
experience:
Firstly, to succeed, a liberalisation programme must be
carried through single-mindedly. Trying to do it gradually risks leaving
people querying the commitment to see the changes through to their
conclusion. Certainty of reform is essential for its success. A policy
that is too gradual is prey to conflicting signals and vulnerable to
special interest groups. That is not to say that genuine transitional
measures should not be adopted. But they must be measures that assist
the change, not delay it. Securing the CAP until 2013 is a guaranteed
way of leaving everyone in doubt about the likelihood of reform. Perhaps
that is the objective!
Secondly, it is vital to look at the full range of rules and
regulations that inhibit the adaptiveness and responsiveness of the
sector that is being asked to change. In New Zealand’s case there were
widespread reinforcing reforms in overall macro-economic management and
micro-economic regulation. Controls on the aggregation of landholdings
were relaxed. But problems remained where there were rules making it
difficult to subdivide land. These in some cases removed options that
would otherwise have been available to farmers to resolve their problems
by selling part of their property and intensifying their use of the
balance. Rules and regulations that are designed to maintain the status
quo will make adjustments much more painful and as a result probably
cost taxpayers a great deal more.
Thirdly, reforms will never be spear-headed by the political
friends of those who benefit from subsidies, rules, regulations and tax
breaks. The reforms in New Zealand were undertaken by a left wing
government that represented virtually no farmers. They were not popular
for doing so. But they argued the case coherently and forced the
farmer’s party to confront the unsustainable and immoral nature of the
policies that had led to the crisis. In the end, everyone – including
the farmers themselves – ended up supporting the broad thrust of the
reform. Debate was over the timing and distribution of pain.
Fourth, reform is much more easily achieved if there is
complete transparency about the nature of the changes. This transparency
is as important for those affected by the reforms as for the population
at large. In truth, everyone is involved. Every citizen is a taxpayer
and has the right to know how much those subsidies are costing him or
her. It is equally important to jettison any mantras that mask the
problems. In New Zealand, farmers had grown used to being called the
“backbone of the nation”. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If
they really were the backbone of the nation, they must be untouchable
musn’t they?
One can identify the same element of ‘untouchableness’ here in
France as the representatives of the political elite parade each year
before the Salon d’Agriculture, each one of them photographed
alongside some prize-winning animal, and each making a declaration of
undying solidarity with the farming community. It was just like that in
New Zealand. But words of undying solidarity don’t resolve problems
and, beyond a certain point, begin to be condescending. One of my most
positive experiences rural MPs had was the opportunity to talk frankly
with farmers who weren’t any longer expecting expressions of sympathy
and support but sought, rather, an honest, frank analysis of their
situation. If you read [French] newspapers, you will find that European
politicians from all countries still talk at length about how supportive
they are rather than candidly confronting the reality of the situation.
Fifth, winning a non-farming constituency for agricultural
liberalisation is made much easier when the negative environmental
consequences of subsidies are explained. They are real – and they
exist here in Europe and in the USA every bit as much as they did in New
Zealand. Paying people to produce things the market is not demanding
inevitably leads to wasteful use of scarce environmental resources. That
is not to say there will be no environmental problems caused by
agriculture in the absence of subsidies – there will. Environmental
regulations are needed to protect common water and soil values.
Sixth, reform will come about if there is a crisis. This is in
a way the most sobering and perhaps depressing conclusion. New Zealand
got rid of subsidies because it could no longer afford them. It relied
on agriculture for its prosperity. If it was having to prop it up on
fiscal life-support systems, there had to be a better way. New Zealand
is much poorer than countries like France. As a result, its ability to
avoid reality through recourse to borrowing was much more limited. To
put it bluntly, the poorer you are, the less rope people will give you
to hang yourself with. The converse also applies. Rich countries like
France are given much more leeway before bad policy and fiscal
extravagance catches up with them. (The ultimate example must be the USA
which is basically absorbing the world’s savings to finance its
current consumption; it will be able to do so for a long time but
eventually even America will have to confront the bill it is sending to
future generations).
The seventh and final observation is that there is no textbook
way to conduct an agricultural liberalisation programme. New Zealand’s
experience was rooted in its particular history, culture, institutions
and financial frailty. So it is not an ‘exportable’ story that can
or should be applied slavishly elsewhere.
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