Lessons to be learnt from Bali

Even as trade ministers worked hard to arrive at a compromise agreement - well past the time for the closing of the Bali Ministerial Conference on Friday - to declare the Ministerial a success, trade negotiators may identify a few lessons that emerged over the last three days of hard negotiations.

First, never take coalitions for granted. The G33 has been together for long. The group, which was also called "Friends of Special Products" in agriculture earlier, has been a coalition of 46 developing countries pressing for limited market opening in agriculture.

But, as soon as the Bali Ministerial meeting started, the chair of the coalition and the Ministerial, Indonesia, in its effort to help make the Bali meeting a success, decided to move away from its core concern of food security, believing the US cannot be pushed beyond a point.

Pakistan also played a role in creating a divide within the G33, though Islamabad's position is slightly different. It is a member of the G33, while at the same time it seeks higher market access for agricultural products export as a member of the Cairns group. This group is a coalition of agricultural exporting nations lobbying for agricultural trade liberalisation. So, it adopts a defensive position on agriculture as a member of the G33, while seeking an aggressive stance on market access for agricultural products as a member of the Cairns group. And this contradiction was evident when it sought to pull down the primarily Indian demand on food security concerns by stating that the minimum support price initiative of the Indian government would distort global trade in agricultural products like rice.

The second lesson was that the emergence of new powers like India, Brazil and China has meant that the dynamics of negotiations have changed without the major players on the top table learning to cooperate and accommodate others.

The same problem was evident in the 'Climate Change' negotiations as well. The developed world over the years has learnt to cooperate and collaborate with each other at multilateral forums. But, now with the dynamics changing, they are finding it difficult to find landing zones. There is a need for greater interaction between the new and old leaders in these multilateral forums to understand each other's red lines to ensure that new cooperation dynamics be built among the large influential players.

The third is the power of networking. From Day 1, there was an attempt to single out India and isolate it. What other countries did not realise was India's networking with the least developed countries, especially from Africa, had been built on mutual understanding and not just aid. So, the willingness to trust India was far more evident among these countries.

Finally, countries are slowly realising that in multilateral forums there have to be genuine win-wins for all now compared to earlier eras. This is because, now, many more countries have improved their skills of negotiations, and, are far more vigilant on the pitfalls in offers made to them.

The writer is principal advisor, APJ-SLG Law Offices