Institutional Innovation in International Governance to End Hunger

Much in the world has changed since the creation after World War II of the IMF, World Bank, and GATT (since 1994 the WTO). Yet the essential rationale underlying these institutions-the need for some form of international economic and trade policy coordination-remains more important today then ever before. This is notably the case in relation to food and agriculture where, notwithstanding striking gains in global agricultural productivity and growth, many countries and people remain chronically food insecure. While many criticisms of the global economy and global institutions are wellfounded, it is hard to think of a future in which international trade and global institutions play no part. The task is to redefine objectives in a global economy, and to restructure institutions to meet these objectives. This paper focuses mainly on redefining objectives; detailed proposals for restructuring institutions are the subject of a forthcoming book, Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Globalization and Food Security (Runge et al. forthcoming). How can economic policies, development assistance, and especially trade policies be redefined to respond to the food insecure? First, food security is not only a national, but a global issue that inevitably involves economic and political interdependence. Efforts to deny this interdependence, and to nationalize food and agricultural policies, have resulted in inefficient and distorted "go it alone" responses to the food problem. These policies are driven by a fear of global market forces, and a somewhat justified sense that LDCs are their victims. International institutions should thus not only increase the efficiency of the global food distribution system but also its fairness and justice. A fair or just distribution of food is central to dealing directly with the poor, and providing an underpinning for a world system based not only on economic logic but also on the logic of civil society. Only if participants in the international market economy believe they have a fair opportunity for success will they become stakeholders in market institutions, including global trade liberalization. How should institutions be restructured to m et these objectives? Such a redefinition has three dimensions, one horizontal, one vertical, a d one psychological. The horizontal dimension involves the breadth or reach of global institutions, their coverage of issues such as food production and trade and related issues of environment, health, and the conservation of scarce resources such as soil and water. The vertical dimension turns on the authority and control that international institutions and organizations exercise in relation to national governments and local authorities. These, too, are issues not only of efficiency but also of justice, and go to the heart of debates over national sovereignty, local self-reliance, and the definition of development as freedom (Sen 1999a). Third, institutional reform, especially directed at food security, must come squarely to terms with the meaning of security itself, in which confidence about future prospects offers the assurance of economic and social opportunity (see Runge 1981).