Alex F. McCalla and John Nash (eds.). Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries.

Khan, Muhammad Jehangir

Alex F. McCalla and John Nash (eds.). Reforming Agricultural Trade for

Developing Countries: Vols. 1 & 2. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007. 308, 261

pages. Paperback. Price not given.

This is a two-volume set comprising papers first presented at a workshop "The Developing Countries, Agricultural Trade, and the WTO", which was jointly sponsored by the International Agricultural Trade Consortium, the World Bank, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries seeks to answer questions confronted in the ongoing Doha Development Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations. It mainly focuses on the influence of developing countries, at least in part due to their large and growing share of world trade. But whether this increase influence will translate into an agreement that is truly development friendly? It also focuses on the key ingredients of such an outcome of the negotiations and its relevance to the developing countries. The first volume is subtitled 'Key Issues for a Pro-Development Outcome of the Doha Round' is issue-oriented. It mainly focused on specific concerns being confronted in the agricultural negotiations and setting the stage for dealing with them to arrive at final agreement that spur growth and reduce poverty in developing countries. The first chapter provides a summary of some of the issues that are fundamental to the Doha negotiations themselves and to the eventual implementation of the agreement. The rest of the volume is in two parts. The first six chapters address selected issues in Doha of particular importance to developing countries. The final two chapters examine country experience.

The second volume Quantifying the Impact of Multilateral Trade Reform comprises chapters that modeled trade reforms through different approaches and. quantifying the resulting benefits and costs to different players in the negotiations. This volume is comprised of eight chapters. The first chapter provides a summary of some of the issues that are fundamental to the Doha negotiations themselves and to the eventual implementation of the agreement. The remaining seven papers present six different analyses of potential impacts of liberalisation.

This two-volume set is an important contribution to understanding the ground realities confronted in the Doha Round negotiations. It will be useful to policy-makers and stakeholders as it puts important analytical work in the public domain and may help improve the chances for a pro-development outcome of the Doha Round negotiations. [Muhammad Jehangir Khan]