Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-29)
MR ANDREW
PENDLETON
23 MARCH 2006
Q20 Mr Caton: Hand-in-hand
with your reservation about economic growth is almost a direct
opposition to trade liberalisation as a way of helping development.
DFID obviously takes a different view. In your experience in Christian
Aid have you seen benefits of trade liberalisation as well as
the downside that you very convincingly gave us with the example
of a particular farmer earlier?
Mr Pendleton: Of course. Christian
Aid is in essence neither pro nor anti liberalisation. Trade liberalisation
is a policy tool that governments can use in their trade policy
in different ways at different times, the climate change debate
being a very good example. If you decide as a developing country
government to grow your renewable energy sector rapidly and you
are a non-producer of renewable energy technologies, you would
be utterly insane to place high import tariffs on imports of the
things that you need to do that. If you are a developing country
that chooses to specialise in the development of computer technology
you would be insane to place high tariffs on the imports of the
things that you need. However, if you develop a very successful
domestic industry by working through liberalising certain aspects
of your import regime then you might want in the future, in order
to help the development of that industry, to raise tariffs in
certain areas. Where I think import liberalisation has been particularly
damaging is in the areas that are most important to poor people
such as agriculture. If you have got a large glut of agriculture
commodities already on the market which are cheap because they
are subsidised at source and then you are forced, as was the case
in many developing countries, by the structural adjustment to
lower your import tariffs it is pretty obvious what is going to
happen and it has happened, it has harmed the livelihoods of poor
people. All we are saying in essence—and it is always my
aim to try and take the ideology out of this debate and look at
the practicalities—is that liberalisation is a tool which
can be both a positive and negative thing. If it is used in the
right place at the right time it makes sense. If it is used in
the wrong place at the wrong time it can be disastrous for poor
people and it has been.
Q21 Mr Caton: You have
been very critical of DFID when it comes to their trade and development
policies in the past. What are your main concerns, and have things
changed in the last year?
Mr Pendleton: The rhetoric has
certainly changed across government and in DFID on trade liberalisation
because I think the rhetoric has moved from liberalisation is
inherently a good thing because the textbooks tell us it is to
we must be careful about how liberalisation is undertaken and
it must be sequenced. I think the problem with the sequencing
argument and in a sense the problem with a lot of trade agreements
is that they straitjacket developing countries. If your aim through
the development of trade and through eventual liberalisation is
to tackle poverty then I think what you need to take account of
is that the import tariffs may take a kind of zigzag, so they
may go up and down. Our fear is that through being strong advocates,
as DFID is, for things like agreements at the WTO and to a certain
extent an Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and African,
Caribbean and Pacific countries, it does not take account of the
fact that if you put countries in a straitjacket of a trade agreement
then they are going to struggle to be able to invoke the trade
policies that they need to do in the interests of their development
and so again it goes back to that argument which I think has been
heard particularly in DFID and the rhetoric has moved but I am
not sure that policy has necessarily moved to follow that.
Q22 Mr Caton: Do you think
trade liberalisation in developing countries is going to have
an impact on climate change and emissions?
Mr Pendleton: When you overlay
the increasing carbon emissions in countries like India and China
over their economic growth you get a kind of echo in a sense and
carbon emissions go up as economic growth goes up. In a sense
the kernel of truth at its heart with the climate change debate
is that we really do not have a choice over this. The fact that
I have questioned growth from the basis of a poverty eradication
point of view --- I hasten to add that that does not make us anti
growth, it means that we need to question growth for growth's
sake. Just creating economic growth does not tackle poverty. Then
I think you need to add in the further change of climate growth
and carbon emissions and what you need to do at the very least
is to begin to ensure that development is clean in developing
countries. That means not just making sure that African countries
that are at a low stage of economic development and are not growing
very much at the moment are provided with the wherewithal, the
resources and the financing to begin to do their development on
a clean path but that also India and China are strongly supported
and encouraged to do so, I think that is critical. There are still
an awful lot of poor people in India and China in spite of their
economic growth and if we are to make those people less poor then
we have to do that in a way which does not further harm their
environment. China and India are also highly sensitive in terms
of their ecology and the poor people that live in the most vulnerable
parts of the country are the ones—and they are largely the
poorest people in those countries—who are once again going
to get whacked by that if we are not careful.
Q23 Mr Caton: We are told
that changes in land use are responsible for between 20 and 30%
of manmade carbon emissions and that most of this is in the developing
world. Is this something Christian Aid has looked at?
Mr Pendleton: No.
Q24 Mr Caton: Do you think
you might be looking at it?
Mr Pendleton: It is certainly
something we need to consider. What we have to be careful of in
the climate change debate is that we do not have our priorities
skewed. We are clear about our priorities, which is that we are
here to tackle poverty, but what we are also becoming increasingly
clear about is that if you tackle poverty at the expense of the
environment and particularly in a way which further harms the
climate then you will undermine your efforts. So I think it is
really important for us to take account of those two facts, but
I do not think that changes in many respects the priorities for
our work, which is about trying to sustain people's livelihoods,
people who are at the very bottom of the ladder of humanity and
whose livelihoods are very fragile and very vulnerable to any
kind of change and require constant help and assistance at the
moment. What we do not want to do is to be doing that forever.
As we always say, we are an organisation that essentially wants
to go out of business. We do not see that happening any time soon.
Essentially if we are to give our supporters good value for money
we do need to take account of climate change, but I think we need
to be careful about how that sometimes may skew our priorities
too.
Q25 Mr Caton: Looking
at agriculture, there are significant climate change impacts due
to the use of air freight, added water use, water pollution and
yet intensive agricultural production for export is argued by
some, including our Government, as vital for poverty reduction.
What is your position on that?
Mr Pendleton: My position is that
it is probably not. It can be in some circumstances. What poor
people need probably more than anything else is jobs and things
that give jobs to poor people is obviously a good thing. Our view
of large scale intensive export orientated agriculture is that
it is largely a rich man's game in developing countries and does
not touch the lives of many poor people and then you are back
into the economic growth argument and again you have to decide
whether or not you think growth is a good thing for poverty reduction
in and of itself. I think our reaction to that is not necessarily,
but you cannot be unequivocal on that because, of course, it may
do in certain circumstances and good kinds of large scale projects
where people's human rights and labour standards are set reasonably
high can provide good livelihoods for poor people, so I do not
think we would rule it out. The issue for us is very much about
how you secure people's livelihoods who are very much below that
level and who are subsisting on their own or who are not even
landowners and work as day labourers or whatever or, increasingly
in the informal sector, when they go to cities, how you secure
their livelihoods and begin to move them up the economic and employment
ladder in a sense. I think for us the game is very much about
the value with which I suppose smaller scale, domestically generated
entrepreneurship might be nurtured. One of the things we are looking
at in the whole investment argument—and we are working with
people like the Co-operative Bank on this at the moment—is
how investors here capitalise small scale projects in developing
countries which have a much clearer demonstrable benefit for poor
people, are much more pro-poor and will also have a much gentler
impact on the environment, because they will be working through
organisations perhaps like us where we have got years of experience
with our partners of the sustainable use of natural resources
in the production of agricultural crops and it is a tough one
because the Co-operative Bank, for instance, invests its south
focused development money in things like World Bank bonds at the
moment. Our argument is that if you are in IFC bonds you are not
necessarily benefiting poor people. So we are working with the
Co-op and we are just about to make a joint announcement with
them about the fact that they will no longer invest in IFC bonds,
and we will probably do a joint conference with them later this
year looking at how to invest in the things that poor people are
doing so you can encourage that kind of business-led development,
private sector-led development, but in a domestic, small scale
sense rather than in this big growth, foreign investment-led way.
Q26 Chairman: Last year
we had two major conferences, one in Hong Kong and the other in
Montreal. Do you think these conferences occurred in two parallel
universes? Was there any connection that you could perceive between
them that was quite clearly being made by the UK Government?
Mr Pendleton: Not as far as I
can see. There is a reticence at the WTO to take on the climate
change and environment debate. It is there, there is a committee
within the WTO that considers it but not from the point of view
of how environment/climate change applications might ultimately
be trade restricting because, of course, the WTO is about removing
things which are trade restricting. There is a disconnect there
and I think that is important because I think we have to raise
the issue of climate change at the WTO and raise the issue of
trade in COPMOP.
Q27 Chairman: In UK terms
do you see DFID's role as being key to that?
Mr Pendleton: It is key to that
because DFID has a presence at both and so it is key to making
those linkages. What I cannot say because I do not know is whether
you have the same staff going to each, I suspect not and whether
if you do not there is a good linkage within DFID about those
staff talking to each other. What I know from Christian Aid, a
big organisation, is that that may well not take place and that
would be a very good thing because I do not think those two agendas
can be divorced from one another.
Q28 Chairman: Is it different
NGOs that cover each or do NGOs like Christian Aid try to be there
at both? How would the NGO world try to make this linkage?
Mr Pendleton: We were not in Montreal.
We have been at COP Summits before. We nearly always have a presence
at G8 Summits. Obviously both climate and development were linked
at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles and because of that focus on trade
we have had a presence at WTO Summits in recent years. There is
a linkage and there is a linkage because we have much smaller
resources, there are fewer people and so the people that tend
to do those things, such as myself, are one and the same.
Q29 Chairman: Andrew,
thank you very much for your evidence this morning which has been
very helpful and comprehensive.
Mr Pendleton: Thank you very much
for asking us to come along.
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