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11 - Agricultural subsidies in the WTO green box: opportunities and challenges for developing countries

from PART III - Green box subsidies and developing countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2010

By
André Nassar ,
Maria Elba Rodriguez-Alcalá ,
Cinthia Costa  and
Saulo Nogueira
Edited by
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz ,
Christophe Bellmann  and
Jonathan Hepburn
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz
Affiliation:
ICTSD, Geneva, Switzerland
Christophe Bellmann
Affiliation:
ICTSD, Geneva, Switzerland
Jonathan Hepburn
Affiliation:
ICTSD, Geneva, Switzerland
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Summary

11 years of green box usage

Perhaps because green box subsidies are not subject to commitments in the AoA, relatively few studies have analysed expenditure in this area. It is therefore not easy to find studies compiling notified expenditure and comparing situations among green box users. Although the WTO (2000) Secretariat background paper is one exception, this study has not subsequently been updated.

Moreover, the green box comprises different programme types and is divided into several categories, making it even harder to offer comparisons between them. Some existing analyses of green box categories focus on decoupled income support and direct payments to producers. The work of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is particularly worthy of mention in this respect.

This section is based on a compilation of green box notifications for a selected number of developed and developing countries. The first part briefly introduces subsidy disciplines in the AoA and looks at traditional green box policies. The subsequent sections are supported by notifications from 1995 onwards.

Typical green box policies: legal arguments and interpretations

The AoA, established in the Uruguay Round, brought disciplines for the use of agricultural subsidies (domestic support and export subsidies) into the multilateral trading system for the first time, establishing limitations and reduction commitments. The agricultural subsidies were classified into three categories:

  • Amber box: domestic support measures that can cause distortion and for this reason are subject to reduction commitments based on the total aggregate measurement of support (AMS). The concept of de minimis must also be mentioned here: this represents a minimum subsidy allowance, which is 5 per cent of the value of production for developed countries and 10 per cent for developing countries.

  • […]

    • Type
    Chapter
    Information
    Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box
    Ensuring Coherence with Sustainable Development Goals
     , pp. 329 - 368
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press
    Print publication year: 2009

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    References

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