Supporting the "Decent Trade" Theme Group for the Geneva Trade and Development Forum (GTDF) on Inclusive Globalization

Project Context

The Geneva Trade & Development Forum (GTDF) – convened by the Swiss think tank IDEAS Center with support from a group of bilateral donors – constitutes a long-term, informal process in which all relevant stakeholders from government, civil society as well as the private sector come together to develop realistic and implementable recommendations designed to build a fair and sustainable global economy.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is one of the key contributors to the Geneva Forum. As part of its support for GTDF, the Ministry is convening one of the ten theme groups which have been tasked to feed innovative ideas and policy recommendations into the September 2008 meeting. Each theme group is focused on one specific issue dimension relevant to the GTDF’s focus, and led by two so-called “shepherds” (one from an industrialized, one from a developing country). The expert commission on “Decent Trade” that is convened by BMZ is co-led by Arna Hartmann (Professor, Berlin) and Diego Pizano (Colombian Association of Coffee Growers). For more background on the GTDF please click here.

Project Objectives

Ahead of the forum scheduled from 17-20 September 2008, the BMZ has asked GPPi to provide support to the “Decent Trade” theme group. In terms of focus, the theme group is tasked to develop the notion of decent trade and to help make it operational by exploring innovative approaches to fostering decent work as a basis for decent trade and suggesting concrete ways and means of facilitating their implementation. It is the ambition of the theme group to move beyond mere discussions about desirable objectives to the identification—and possibly implementation—of desirable and feasible policy initiatives in support of decent work for decent trade.

GPPi provides research support to the theme group, focusing primarily on the potential and limits of existing mechanisms to implement decent trade. Among others, this includes an analysis of the role of voluntary, market-based initiatives promoting fair trade, as well as an assessment of the relationship between mandatory and voluntary approaches to implementing the decent trade agenda. In addition, GPPi prepared and organized a one-day preparatory meeting to launch the expert commission and to define work processes and prospective outputs in January 2008, and a second, two-day stock-taking meeting at the end of April 2008 in Berlin. In close collaboration with the two co-shepherds, GPPi will also feed the results of the theme group into the GTDF.