Subsidy WatchIssue 5, October 2006


  • Transparency in Farm Subsidies: Is Sunlight the Best Disinfectant?

    A healthy agricultural sector needs plenty of sunlight. To that, our guest commentators this month would add that it also requires a bright light on farm subsidies. Jack Thurston and Nils Mulvad, the founders of Farmsubsidy.org, are two people who have helped foster greater transparency in agricultural subsidies by pressuring governments in the European Union to publish data on payments and recipients of farm subsidies.

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Also in this issue:

Analysis

  • Transparency in farm subsidies: is sunlight the best disinfectant?

    By Jack Thurston and Nils Mulvad, Co-founders, www.farmsubsidy.org

    Question: what do Prince Albert of Monaco, Ted Turner, Lufthansa, Congressman Marion Berry (D-AK), the Danish State Prison Service, Nestlé, the Duke of Westminster and Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman all have in common?

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Commentary

  • An introduction to service subsidies

    By Pierre Sauvé*

    The last round of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade talks, the Uruguay Round, broke new ground by broadening the scope of world trade rules to cover areas never before subject to multilateral disciplines, and the services sector was without doubt where such broadening was most significant in economic terms.

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Studies

  • Readings

    US to introduce on-line database on government spending

    A searchable database that tracks federal spending by the United States government will come on-line by 2008, following legislation passed in September. The Web-based search engine, which will include all federal funding to public and private organizations, has been hailed as a victory for transparency in government operations by a broad coalition of advocacy groups.

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Events

  • Seventh Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation

    Hosted by the University of Ottawa, the Environmental Taxation Conference is an annual gathering of leading international experts in law, economics, tax and accounting, political sciences, environmental policy and more who will present the latest research findings about how economic instruments can be used to advance sustainable development. The theme of this year's conference is Translating Theory to Practice.

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  • Government support for ethanol and biodiesel

    The biofuels industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years, fuelled in large part by border protection, subsidies, government procurement, tax relief and rebates, as well as by mandated shares in total transport fuel sales. Government support-monetary and non-monetary-to the production and consumption of biofuels has potentially large and difficult-to-predict implications for trade and the environment. The International Institute for Sustainable Development's Global Subsidies Initiative (publishers of this newsletter) has made quantifying the extent of subsidies to biofuels a priority.

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