Rejoining the World

Jim Harkness and Alexandra Spieldoch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

For our own sake and the world’s, the next administration should act quickly to chart a new course of global cooperation. The United States must reengage with international institutions and conventions, while, at the same time, reasserting the public interest over the corporate interest and honoring the links between our national well-being and international development, human rights, and the environment.

Global Ideas

  • Pay back dues to the United Nations
  • Appoint a UN ambassador with an explicit mandate to make the institution more effective
  • Push for a fairer decision-making process within international bodies dealing with global trade and finance
  • Support the Millennium Development Goals
  • Ratify UN treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and on the Rights of the Child
  • Create a presidential Office of the U.S. Representative on Multilateral Environmental Agreements
  • Join the Kyoto Protocol, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
  • Take the lead among developed countries in committing to greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
  • Structure U.S. trade agreements to protect the environment, workers, and communities
  • Review and renegotiate existing trade agreements to comply with sustainable development goals
  • Support a Global Food Convention to address food sovereignty and the agricultural dimensions of climate change
  • Respect in U.S. trade policy the right of all countries to safeguard their food sovereignty
  • Establish farmer-held strategic grain reserves
  • Control price volatility in commodity markets by regulating speculation
  • Create a cabinet-level Department of Global Development to coordinate foreign assistance programs
  • Reform U.S. food aid programs to allow recipient countries to source food locally

 

Excerpted from Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era, our shared agenda for Congress and the Administration.

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