News stories by Pascal Lamy

PARIS / BRUSSELS, May 09 (IPS) - If one so wished, it would be entirely possible to spend a lifetime travelling from one international environmental conference to the next, without ever returning home. But the relentless pace of these meetings does not always translate into equally rapid action.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 17 (IPS) - Deep-sea mining may not be on the official agenda next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 20-24), but restoring public trust in international cooperation is.

CALI, Colombia, Oct 21 (IPS) - COP16, the much-anticipated follow-up talks to the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreement, which aims to reverse an alarming loss of nature on land and sea, opens in Cali, Colombia.

GENEVA, Aug 21 (IPS) - On Aug. 31, I will be stepping down after eight years as Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

GENEVA, Jun 04 (IPS) - The old theories governing the way that countries produce and trade are being replaced. The pattern of trade is being transformed by increasingly sophisticated technology and innovations in transportation; and the topography of actors is shifting to reflect new poles of growth.

GENEVA, Mar 27 (IPS) - For decades, commodity trade has been understood from the point of view of "commodity dependent" exporting countries, those whose revenues are largely generated by commodities exports. The trend of decreasing agricultural commodity prices was the focus of attention. However, from the beginning of the 2000s, there was an upward trend in agricultural commodity prices culminating in the price peak of 2007-08.

GENEVA, Mar 04 (IPS) - The global economy is facing strong headwinds that have set back world trade and output growth. Despite the measures implemented in many countries to contain the slowdown, production and employment trends continue to be negative. In the light of these developments, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) recently revised its forecast for world trade growth in 2012 to 2.5 percent, down from the previous 3.7 percent forecast. We foresee a volume of trade growth of 4.5 percent in 2013, below the long-term annual average of five to six percent that we have enjoyed for the last 20 years.

GENEVA, Sep 27 (IPS) - Multilateralism is at a crossroads. This is a crucial matter for environmental and sustainability issues, as we have seen in the Rio+20 Summit, and for trade and other economic matters. The G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, focused precisely on improving our collective response to the current economic turbulence, which is at the heart of developments in the European Union (EU) as well.

Why did Africa move from being a net exporter to a net importer of food in the 1980s when the prices of its key commodity exports tumbled and its agriculture slowed down? Its food trade deficit is now around USD 20 billion and, given the current rise in prices, could get much worse, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Is globalisation, which is shaping our societies whether we like it or not, a threat to identity? If we were to believe all that we hear, the winds of globalisation are wreaking havoc everywhere, uprooting identities and cultures which for centuries have been shaping human relations, sweeping away all local values and customs, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).