Heave ho and the horn blows. It’s departure time for another container ship. Port of embarkation: Savannah, Georgia. Destination: Adana, Turkey. About 25 of the containers on this ship are filled with Georgian cotton. Despite the enduring cotton crisis in America, half a million tons of the fiber pass through the port of Savannah each year, representing some 500 million dollars in exports that are shipped to countries around the world, including China, Pakistan and Turkey.

Adana is the nation’s fourth largest city and the centre for the Turkish cotton and textile industries. In this case the American cotton is sent to a factory where it is spun and used to make towels. Great attention is paid to ensure high quality, oh-so-soft and fluffy towels to attract the Turkish shopper… or rather, the American shopper. The towels are packaged and sent to the United States on another container ship. This is crazy!

There are of course the energy and CO2 emissions involved in this to and from tango across the ocean. But even if we put aside such issues in the name of international trade, it cannot be denied that the system is absurd, especially given the fact that Turkey is one of the top ten cotton producers in the world.

The story of the roving Georgian cotton was recently told on national French television, forming one chapter in the larger chronicle of one container ship’s circumnavigation of the globe. It reminded me of another story, that of the traveling tomatoes told in We Feed the World (2005), a film by Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer. Spanish tomatoes, ripened under the warm southern sun, have long supplied northern European markets. I was an occasional consumer, preferring the Spanish variety to the other widely available option, the tasteless variety grown in rainy Holland. Note: I was, for as it turns out, those tomatoes are not at all sun-ripened.

As shown in Wagenhofer’s film, in southern Spain tomatoes and other vegetables are grown in greenhouses, greenhouses as far as the eye can see and beyond. And not a tree to be found. They are grown using an artificial (read inefficient), irrigation system manned by workers from North and West Africa. The men work long hours and live in makeshift shacks in between the greenhouses. A large percentage of the produce from southern Spain is transported by truck to northern Europe, and a certain percentage is sent to different countries in Africa. Even with the higher production costs in Europe plus the transportation costs, the Spanish tomatoes are sold in Africa at cheaper prices than locally grown tomatoes. Absurd.

Why such absurdities in world trade? Much of the answer lies in subsidies. The devastating effects of first-world subsidized agriculture on markets in the developing world are well known. Subsidized produce is artificially competitive, encourages an increase in production and pushes international market prices down. Local farmers in developing countries cannot compete, and are forced out of business and into poverty. Yet the developed world continues to subsidize its agriculture. Disagreements over reducing subsidies in general and export subsidies in particular, have threatened to jeopardize several rounds of international trade talks over the past years. Both the European Union and the United States remain reluctant to renounce their protectionist measures.

Of course not all subsidies should be abolished. As said a few months ago during a discussion here on Green Options about the US Farm Bill, subsidies should not be paid to the barons of unfair unsustainable trade, the mega agribusinesses, but should fund local organic outfits, thereby encouraging the shift to green sustainable agriculture.

We Feed the World

World Trade Organization

Oxfam on Cotton Subsidies

UN Food and Agriculture Organization

A decidedly competitive air reigned at a debate on carbon emissions, one of many discussions during “Green Week” in Brussels, Belgium. Watching the debate live on the European Commission’s website last Thursday evening, I witnessed a verbal jousting match between the American ambassador to the European Union and a representative of the World Wild Life Fund. Both sides delivered several blows below the belt, provocative comments that made the match all the more exciting.

The European Union is celebrating its fiftieth birthday and Green Week 2007 was one of the parties held to mark the occasion. For a number of years the European Commission has hosted a series of conferences and forums, during one week in June, focused on a different environmental concern each time. This year’s Green Week, held in Brussels from June 12 -15, centred on “Past Lessons and Future challenges” of European environmental policy. Leading representatives from governments, businesses and NGOs convened to discuss the victories already won and deliberate on the trials that lie ahead.

To be more accurate, it is not the Union itself but the Treaty of Rome that is being commemorated this year, a treaty signed on March 25 1957 by France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, establishing the European Economic Community. Environmental policy did not feature in the Treaty of Rome, but members of the Community were soon compelled to take notice of the brutal impact unmonitored economic development was having on nature. A video clip on the Commission’s website chronicles the dreadful state of the environment in the early 1970s, the growing sense of disquiet and urgency amongst European citizens, and the implementation of numerous green projects in different areas of the environment, throughout the Union.

Many environmental problems call for not just trans-European but trans-Atlantic and international cooperation. The most urgent concern, the burning reality of climate change, is pressing for a massive global response. So it was more than apt that the United States was represented at the debate on carbon emissions held during Green Week.

The debate was entitled “Green Talk: Challenges of a Carbon Economy” and the panel included representatives from the aviation industry and from the electricity sector. But the two major players in the jousting match were M.C. Boyden, United States Ambassador to the European Union and Stephan Singer, Head of the Climate and Energy Policy Unit at the World Wildlife Fund. Mr Tim King, the editor of The European Voice, was the moderator, the wise jester who intervened subtly when the match got out of hand.

The discussion got off to a slow start. The Ambassador was caught in Brussels traffic but when he arrived, Mr Boyden joined in to the talk on air pollution. After referring to statistics on the number of deaths per year from respiratory, pollution-caused illnesses, he made a first stinging comment. “I would say it’s much safer to live in an American city than in a European city,” he said.

Each player threw in his statistics and boasted about being at the vanguard of environmentally friendly technology and of the carbon trading system. As the discussion turned to focus on the challenge of reducing carbon emissions without thwarting economic growth, each man grew defensive and repeatedly promoted his vested interests. Mr Boyden was particularly anxious and seemed to be responding to attacks made outside the arena of Green Week.

Mr Singer spoke of the 1986 Montreal Protocol, the international agreement on phasing out the manufacture of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). At the time, he said, many companies, “cried wolf about going bankrupt”. If they were forced to cut their production of CFCs they would go bust. With the implementation of the protocol, those companies were obliged to phase out CFCs, but they did not go bankrupt. On the contrary, Mr Singer insisted, they hardly suffered any losses. Indeed the protocol has been hailed as a great feat of negotiation and a victory for the environment. Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called it “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date”.

There is no reason that the success of the Montreal Protocol not be repeated in other realms, and therefore, Mr Singer felt, both businesses and policy makers have no excuse for failing to introduce more stringent rules on carbon emissions.

On the defensive again, Mr Boyden responded: “It was under big bad Ronald Regan that we achieved the treaty on CFCs, and then under big bad Bush father. There was no media hype around it, but we got it through, and that was under the Republicans.” On the subject of carbon emissions he said: “The United States wants to isolate those who are really contributing to emissions, pull ‘em into a room and beat ‘em over the head. We need to get the big guys. We need to get the big guys who are really contributing… including us, including us… including us.”

Mr Singer was adamant. “We have wasted 6 years because the Bush administration has held the world hostage,” he said. “We see grass roots initiatives in individual states in America but not on a national level.” He was convinced: “Once the Bush administration is gone, we will see big changes.”

“I don’t like to be attacked on our carbon trading system,” Mr Boyden countered. “It’s more aggressive than yours.”

The jousting match reached its climax when the ambassador said of carbon trading: “We’ve paved the way on how to do this. But the press won’t report this.” To which Mr Singer replied: “The US advising the EU about a carbon trading system is like the Pope advising people on extra-marital sex.”

The two men had to back down when Mr King interceded to ask the audience for their reactions. The first person to comment expressed his utter despair over climate change. Listening to the panel members he felt there was no hope. The dire state of the environment would have required a discussion on an entirely different plane.

Perhaps it is the mark of foolish optimism, but I believe there is hope to be found in such debate. There is hope in the competition between the movers and shakers of the developed world to produce the most advanced and efficient technologies for sustainable development. There is even hope in the defensiveness of the players, because it demonstrates the desire to project an image that is not too hostile towards environmental concerns. As long as the competition remains constructive, technological advances are shared, and the concern about image does not incite fraud, there is hope. Even when the players engage in schoolyard style one-uppmanship, if they use names and not sticks and stones, there is little risk of broken bones.

Image Credit: Deutsche Welle

European Commission: Green Week
United Nations Environment Programme: Ozone Secretariat
The Ozone Hole: The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer