The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

 

THE 15th Session of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States and European Union Joint Assembly opened today (Monday) in Slovenia with a call for cooperation to tackle the many problems facing ACP.

Co-President of the JPA, Hon Wilkie Rasmussen, of the Cook Islands highlighted the need to address wealth imbalance, loss of skilled manpower from ACP states, climate change, poverty, agriculture, food security as amongst pressing issues that will be discussed.

The recent political upheaval in Kenya and current problems in Chad will also be discussed.

Mr Rasmussen said it is important that members remain focussed to strive to achieve their goals.

He said the ACP countries´ represent about 20 percent of the world's population yet the group only generates a fraction of the world's wealth.

Mr Rasmussen said African States are some of the world’s biggest suppliers of minerals, and yet they earn just a small percentage of the final market value of the minerals they produce.

´´Some ACP States are the largest exporters of primary commodities, and yet they are not known as manufacturers of finished products made from their exports, ´´ he said.

On climate change, Mr Rasmussen said: ``We still do not understand very clearly how this is going to affect the world.´´

But already, he said, it is very apparent that ACP States, among the least contributors to the causes of climate change will suffer disproportionately from its consequences, partly because there are simply not enough resources for mitigation and control of the effects of climate change.

He pointed out that some Pacific Islands and Caribbean States are threatened with rising sea levels to the extent that some of them could be submerged under water in some years to come.

``Even in this case, events at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change held in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007, which saw protracted negotiations on the basic issue of agreeing on targets to reduce carbon emissions, demonstrated that as developing countries ACP States have very little hope of influencing the global development agenda when commercial and vested interests are at stake. ,`` he said.

Mr Rasmussen believes that ACP States have very little hope of influencing the global development agenda when commercial and vested interests are at stake.

Meanwhile, Mr Rasmussen said agriculture plays a central part in the well-being of developing countries’ economies and their people.

He said in the developing world, an average of 50 percent of people make their living from farming and agriculture, and in some countries, this figure rises to over 80 per cent.

Moreover, the new co-president of the JPA said, agriculture particularly affects women, accounting for the vast majority of women’s employment in developing countries.

Mr Rasmussen said agriculture also plays a central part in reducing poverty.

He pointed out that three quarters of the world’s 1.2 billion extremely poor people live and work in rural areas.

However, Mr Rasmussen said, the agricultural sector is the most protected and heavily subsidised sector in the developed countries.

``This distorts prices and makes African agricultural produce less competitive in world markets,´´ he said.

He states that the European Union (EU) support to milk production per cow is 16 times more than the average per capita spending on education by all developing countries, 25 times more than the average per capita spending on education by countries in sub-Saharan Africa and over 90 times more than per capita spending on education in the world’s Least Developed Countries.

Tariff Inequalities

Mr Rasmussen said tariff reductions in Africa, on the other hand, are producing unfair competition, since many imported products enjoy heavy subsidies that distort prices and undermine local small-scale production.

He said this amounts to dumping overproduced and subsidised produce onto the markets of developing countries.

´´If this situation does not change, developed countries could in this way be preventing ACP States’ development, ´´ Mr Rasmussen said.

END//

FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT ROBERT IROGA iroga@acp.int