Gary Gereffi is participating at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting called the Fourth Global Review of Aid for Trade -- Connecting to Value Chains, July 8-10, 2013.
As the leading academic architect of the Global Value Chains (GVC) framework being used to organize the meeting, Gary Gereffi’s role at this meeting has included:
a) Moderating the first substantive session, entitled "Value Chains -- Adding Value for Development?" (Session 3), which included as participants the European Commissioner for Trade, the Ministers of Trade of the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Cameroon, a representative from the Bangladesh Garment and Exporters Manufacturers Association, and the Corporate Affairs Director of SAB Miller Africa.
b) Panelist in a book launch panel for a new book by the WTO on Global Value Chains in a Changing World, co-edited by Patrick Low, the chief economist at the WTO (attached). The book launch panel included Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the WTO, Hubert Escaith, the chief statistician of the WTO, and Gereffi to discuss his book chapter on "Global value chains and industrial policy: The role of emerging economies."
c) Panelist at a third event on the "Capturing the Gains" project, which outlined findings from a 3-year research project financed by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), in which Gary was the co-PI along with Stephanie Barrientos of the University of Manchester.
This WTO meeting is a very significant event. It has attracted global attention to the Global Value Chains perspective (which was launched at Duke 20 years ago, with the "Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism" conference and subsequent book of the same title), and there are representatives from all the United Nations agencies, multilateral and bilateral development banks, and representatives from every country in the UN system. The African Development Bank is asking Gary’s Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness (CGGC) at Duke to carry out a project to mainstream GVC analysis in its lending program, and CGGC is also working with the World Bank to develop a "workforce development" GVC analysis in Burundi, and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. OECD has also asked Duke CGGC to enter a multiyear project with them.
Department of Sociology