The largest outreach event of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will start on Tuesday at the multilateral trade organisation's secretariat in the Swiss city of Geneva.
Under the theme of “Re-globalisation: Better Trade for a Better World,” this year's forum will explore how re-globalisation can help make trade more inclusive and ensure that its benefits reach more people.
In particular, the forum will delve into how green policies, services, and digitalisation can contribute to this objective. The sub-themes of the forum are green policies to maximise the benefits of trade, services trade to build progress and enhance welfare and digitalisation as a catalyst for inclusive trade.
The public forum will feature 139 sessions from September 10-13. Sessions are organised by WTO member governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations, academia and international organisations with many sessions livestreamed on the WTO website.
The forum will kick off with the launch of the World Trade Report, which this year will explore the complex interlinkages between trade and inclusiveness across and within economies.
The forum will also feature a lecture by Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard University and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Barack Obama's tenure as President of the United States.
Following his presentation, Professor Furman will have a fireside chat with Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, allowing participants to witness a candid exchange on the potential of re-globalisation at a time of geopolitical uncertainty.
Several interactive activities will be organised throughout the forum, including an immersive exhibition by the International Trade Centre (ITC) to celebrate its 60th anniversary.
Representatives from civil society, academia, business, government, international organizations and the media have already arrived in Geneva to participate in the forum. The organisers have set up a packed schedule, anticipating a hectic week ahead.
Talking to BSS, Barkat Ullah Maruf, director-partnerships and development communication, COAST Foundation, said that the public forum offers an opportunity to gather views, opinions and analyses from different stakeholders in global trade.
"In a sense, it is an agenda-shaping exercise for the ministerial conference which is the highest decision-making event of the organisation," he added. Maruf will attend the forum as a moderator at a panel on "Trade rules for supporting small-scale farming as contributors to green trade in agriculture: Which way forward?"
Maruf, however, said challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation have become a persistent determinant of the global agricultural production and trade system.
Small farmers, across the developing and developed world, including Bangladesh, have been at the heart of this discourse, he mentioned. He informed that the farmers have been major contributors to sustainability but have suffered most from the effects of climate change and environmental devastation.
At the same time, their engagement in global trade has been rather limited and precarious, made more vulnerable by global price volatility and an uncertain global market, he added.
Barkat Ullah Maruf said the forum will also explore how small farmers can be better integrated into the global production and trading system, how they can contribute more and benefit from greener production and trading systems, how the WTO as an institution and its Membership can cater to their needs, and how trade policy outside the realm of the WTO can be synergised to better deliver on both sustainability and food security.
