Impacts on poor rural producers in developing countries GLOBALIZATION, LIBERALIZATION AND PROTECTIONISM

FOREWORD Globalization and trade liberalisation carry with them tremendous challenges for poor countries and poor people, especially rural poor people, within poor countries. They carry also opportunities. In order for IFAD to be able to develop effective and relevant programmes and engage in effective policy dialogue and advocacy for pro-poor changes in the context of globalization and trade liberalisation, it needs to develop a firm grasp of the circumstances and situations under which countries or communities are affected by the opportunities and risks that these two processes generate. While there have been many studies which discussed, in general, the overall negative outcomes of globalization on the poor, what has been direly lacking, however, has been the collection of local evidence and the documentation of local situations affected by factors, both in the domestic and international policy environment, which emanate from the broader processes of globalization and liberalization. To address this IFAD has entered into partnership with the Third World Network and extended its financial support to undertake some case studies (including of its own programmes) that would provide, precisely, the evidence and concrete realities that would argue for pro-poor changes in the present global order and, more specifically, in relation to the international and domestic trade regimes. The studies that follow are the fruits of that collaboration.