Traditional chinese medicine (phytotherapy): health technology assessment report - selected aspects

Objective: A summary of main aspects from a Health Technology Assessment report on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Switzerland concerning effectiveness and safety is given. Materials and Methods: Literature search was performed through 13 databases, by scanning reference lists of articles and by contacting experts. Assessed were quality of documentation, internal and external validity. Results: Effectiveness: 43 articles concerning 'gastrointestinal tract and liver' were assessed. The studies covering 7,436 patients were undertaken in China (35), Japan (3), USA (2) and Australia (3); 33/43 being controlled studies. 34/40 show significantly better results in the TCM-treated group. A comparison of studies on results of treatment based on a diagnosis according to TCM criteria and studies on results of treatment according to Western diagnosis shows that treatment based on TCM diagnosis improves the result. The comparison of treatment by individual medication and standard medication showed a trend in favor of individual medication. Safety: TCM training and practice for physicians in Switzerland are officially regulated. Side effects occur, but no severe effects have been registered up to now in Switzerland. TCM medicinals are imported; admission regulations are being installed. Problems due to production abroad, Internet trade, self-medication or admixtures are possible. Conclusion: The evaluation of the literature search provides evidence for a basic clinical effectiveness of TCM therapy. Severe side effects were not observed in Switzerland. Regulations for trading and use of medicinals prevent treatment risks. Further clinical studies in a Western context are required.

Genetic engineering and the world trade system

While the WTO agreements do not regulate the use of biotechnology per se, their rules can have a profound impact on the use of the technology for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. This book seeks to identify the challenges to international trade regulation that arise from biotechnology. The contributions examine whether existing international obligations of WTO Members are appropriate to deal with the issues arising for the use of biotechnology and whether there is a need for new international legal instruments, including a potential WTO Agreement on Biotechnology. They combine various perspectives on and topics relating to genetic engineering and trade, including human rights and gender; intellectual property rights; traditional knowledge and access and benefit sharing; food security, trade and agricultural production and food safety; and medical research, cloning and international trade.

Ecosystem service trade-offs and stakeholder claims - a meso-scale study from a Madagascar biodiversity hotspot

The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar has been labelled a global biodiversity hotspot due to its extremely high rates of endemic species which are heavily threatened by accelerated deforestation rates and landscape change. The traditional practice of shifting cultivation or "tavy" used by the majority of land users in this area to produce subsistence rice is commonly blamed for these threats. A wide range of stakeholders ranging from conservation to development agencies, and from the private to the public sector has therefore been involved in trying to find solutions to protect the remaining forest fragments and to increase agricultural production. Consequently, provisioning, regulating and socio-cultural services of this forest-mosaic landscape are fundamentally altered leading to trade-offs between them and consequently new winners and losers amongst the stakeholders at different scales. However, despite a growing amount of evidence from case studies analysing local changes, the regional dynamics of the landscape and their contribution to such trade-offs remain poorely understood. This study therefore aims at using generalised landscape units as a base for the assessment of multi-level stakeholder claims on ecosystem services to inform negotiation, planning and decision making at a meso-scale. The presented study applies a mixed-method approach combining remote sensing, GIS and socio-economic methods to reveal current landscape dynamics, their change over time and the corresponding ecosystem service trade-offs induced by diverse stakeholder claims on the regional level. In a first step a new regional land cover classification for three points in time (1995, 2005 and 2011) was conducted including agricultural classes characteristic for shifting cultivation systems. Secondly, a novel GIS approach, termed “landscape mosaics approach” originally developed to assess dynamics of shifting cultivation landscapes in Laos was applied. Through this approach generalised landscape mosaics were generated allowing for a better understanding of changes in land use intensities instead of land cover. As a next step we will try to use these landscape units as proxies to map provisioning and regulating ecosystem services throughout the region. Through the overlay with other regional background data such as accessibility and population density and information from a region-wide stakeholder analysis, multiscale trade-offs between different services will be highlighted. The trade-offs observed on the regional scale will then be validated through a socio-economic ground-truthing within selected sites at the local scale. We propose that such meso-scale knowledge is required by all stakeholders involved in decision making towards sustainable development of north-eastern Madagascar.

The Dialectical Relationship of Preferential and Multilateral Trade Agreements

Preferentialism and multilateralism are not two independent and succinct avenues in the pur-suit of market access and regulatory policies. They historically build upon each other in a dialectical process, closely related and linked through regulatory bridges and references. They influence and direct each other in various ways. The paper mainly focuses on the evolution of international protection of intellectual property rights and of services. The multilateral regulation of the TRIPS and others derive from years of regulatory experience and high numbers of preferential agreements across the globe. The GATS and others, on the other hand, have entered the pluri- or multilateral stage early. Once regulation has reached the mul-tilateral stage, preferentialism focuses on WTO-plus and -extra commitments. Both areas, however, show close interaction. The principle of MFN ensures that multilateralism and preferentialism do not evolve independently from each other. It produces significant spill-over effects of preferential agreements. Such effects and the need to develop uniform and coherent regulatory standards have led in parallel to a number of preferential, plurilateral and multilateral regulatory initiatives. We submit that the process will eventually encourage the return to multilateralism and negotiations in international fora, in particular the WTO while traditional market access may stay with preferential relations among Nations. Such burden-sharing between different regulatory fora should be reflected in future WTO rules providing the overall backbone of the system.

A Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement: Implications for Swiss Agriculture

To say that regionalism is gaining momentum has become an understatement. To mourn the lack of progress in multilateral trade rule-making is a commonplace in the discourse of politicians regretting the WTO negotiation standstill, and of “know-what-to-do” academics. The real problem is the uneven level-playing field resulting from increasing differences of rules and obligations. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) is a very ambitious project. WTI studies in 2014 have shown that the implications for Switzerland could be enormous. But even the combined market power of the two TTIP participants – the EU and the USA – will not level the playing field impairing the regulatory framework, and the market access barriers for trade in agriculture. Such differences will remain in three areas which, incidentally, are also vital for a global response to the food security challenge to feed 9 billion people before the year 2050: market access, non-tariff barriers, and trade-distorting domestic support programmes. This means that without multilateral progress the TTIP and other so-called mega-regionals, if successfully concluded, will exacerbate rather than lessen trade distortions. While this makes farmers in rich countries safer from competition, competitive production in all countries will be hampered. Consequently, and notwithstanding the many affirmations to the contrary, farm policies worldwide will continue to only address farmer security without increasing global food security. What are the implications of the TTIP for Swiss agriculture? This article, commissioned by Waseda University in Tokyo, finds that the failure to achieve further reforms – including a number of areas where earlier reforms have been reversed – is presenting Switzerland and Swiss agriculture with a terrible dilemma in the eventuality of a successful conclusion of the TTIP. If Swiss farm production is to survive for more than another generation, continuous reform efforts are required, and over-reliance on the traditional instruments of border protection and product support is to be avoided. Without a substantial TTIP obliging Switzerland to follow suit, autonomous reforms will remain extremely fragile.

Carbon dioxide emissions and international trade at the turn of the millennium

We present a new dataset of geographical production-, final (embodied) production-, and consumption-based carbon dioxide emission inventories, covering 78 regions and 55 sectors from 1997 to 2011. We extend previous work both in terms of time span and in bridging from geographical to embodied production and, ultimately, to consumption. We analyse the recent evolution of emissions, the development of carbon efficiency of the global economy, and the role of international trade. As the distribution of responsibility for emissions across countries is key to the adoption and implementation of international environmental agreements and regulations, the final production- and consumption-based inventories developed here provide a valuable extension to more traditional geographical production-based criteria.

Growth, convergence and trade: The services sector in India’s states

India’s success story in services is well documented at the national level, but similar literature does not exist for India’s states. In this paper, we bridge this gap in research by looking at India’s services growth at the sub-national level and in doing so, also challenge existing literature by arguing that this growth has positive implications for income distribution. We find that even as per capita income is not converging across India’s states, per capita services are; evidence is provided both in terms of traditional measures of sigma- and beta-convergence and more recent panel unit root tests. A more disaggregated analysis of services sectors reveals convergence in railways, public administration and financial services. Finally, a Jensen & Kletzer (2005) approach to determining tradability provides evidence of most services being “traded” across India’s states, suggesting the role of such trade in the services growth and convergence story.