Two world forums start today, one economic and one social. Both offer a real chance to tackle global poverty, writes Alex Wijeratna Alex Wijeratna Wednesday January 26 2005 The Guardian

Two meetings starting today will consider the challenges of globalisation. But they come from diametrically opposed viewpoints and experience, and it's a fair bet they will come away with different prescriptions for change.

In Europe the great and the good will gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, the annual talking shop of the world's political and business elite. This year's theme is Taking Responsibility For Tough Issues, covering, among other topics, equitable globalisation, governance, and climate change. A select invitation-only group of 2,200 delegates will be asked to decide their top six priorities and draw up action plans.

An ocean away, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, many thousands will take part in the World Social Forum. Activists from social movements, environmental and human rights campaigners, and union leaders will hear the Brazilian president Lula da Silva help launch a new anti-poverty campaign, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. It is an attempt to mobilise citizens worldwide to demand action from their governments.

If you want to make a difference, which forum do you go to? For an aid agency concerned with injustice and poverty, the answer has to be both. ActionAid will be campaigning at Davos. We will also have a team in Brazil, learning from and linking with groups from across the world.

At both events, ActionAid will help put the rights of poor rural communities on the agenda. We will be publicising our Stop Corporate Abuse campaign, calling on governments to lead the way in regulating the activities of multinationals.

Our new report, Power Hungry: Six Reasons to Regulate Global Food Corporations, reveals that the activities of multinational food and agribusiness companies and their subsidiaries, such as Nestlé, Monsanto, Parmalat, Syngenta and Unilever, threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of poor farmers and often undermine basic rights.

For example, ActionAid's research from Brazil shows that about 50,000 dairy farmers have been forced out of business after a series of takeovers by Nestlé and Parmalat. Many producers could not meet the stringent new standards imposed by the two companies. Farmers were asked to install expensive milk refrigeration tanks on their farms, but most could not afford this equipment.

In India, last year an estimated 12,000 children worked on cottonseed farms supplying subsidiaries of multinationals such as Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta and Unilever. Many children were also exposed to dangerous pesticides.

In the Indian tea sector, where big companies control more than half the market, thousands of small-scale tea growers and plantation workers are struggling to earn enough to feed their families. The prices paid for tea at auction have fallen by 33% between 1998 and 2004 in southern India. But the prices consumers are paying for tea continue to rise and the shareholder dividends of companies such as Hindustan Lever, a subsidiary of Unilever, have quadrupled.

These cases provide damning evidence of the impact of increasing corporate power within the global food chain. The statistics are alarming. Just three companies control 85% of the world's tea market. Two companies handle 50% of the world's trade in bananas. In Ivory Coast, four multinationals control 95% of cocoa processing. And in Peru, Nestlé controls 80% of milk production.

ActionAid acknowledges that multinational companies are here to stay, and that they can bring benefits to poor communities. That's why we're not giving up on Davos, although even the most progressive multinationals are not fully accountable for their social and environmental impacts.

To fight poverty, you have to mobilise at all levels. It's why president Lula da Silva will fly to Davos after opening the Porto Alegre forum. He will meet ministers in an attempt to broker an agreement on world trade in favour of the millions of people in the developing world, who are currently living in poverty.

The UK arm of the global call to action against poverty campaign is the Make Poverty History campaign, which is concentrating on the three pillars of debt cancellation, more and better-targeted aid, and fairer trade conditions.

There are strong connections between poor countries' indebtedness, lack of access to aid and inequitable world trading regulations that favour rich countries. It must be understood, both at Davos and Porto Alegre, that we have to address all three of these issues if we really want to make poverty history.

· Alex Wijeratna is an ActionAid campaigner.

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