FOREWORD

In the Doha Round of trade negotiations, it has been acknowledged that agriculture has a special role to play in developing countries and non-trade concerns like food security, livelihood security and issues related to rural development should be given priority over trade liberalization. To enable developing countries take account of their developmental needs, two new defensive instruments have been proposed in the current round of negotiations on agriculture. First, it has been decided that developing countries will have the flexibility to designate an appropriate number of products as Special Products (SP) which will be eligible for more flexible market access commitments. Second, to temporarily protect the domestic agriculture of developing countries from international commodity price volatility and import surges, a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) will be made available to these countries. Both SP and SSM are new defensive instruments made available to developing countries in the Doha Round of trade talks and it will be important to analyze how these mechanisms are going to help developing countries in their pursuit to protect the livelihood and food security of their farmers. This paper focuses on the SSM and analyzes its implications for developing countries. It also puts forth specific suggestions regarding design and implementation of a price-trigger-based special safeguard mechanism. It is hoped that the working paper will help policy-makers and stakeholders to take a view on this important issue. We are very grateful to the Sir Ratan Tata Trust for funding this and other research on WTO issues