If they are truly serious about helping poor countries develop through trade, rich countries have to recognise that they will need to make sacrifices.
The caps on farming subsidies offered by the United States and European Union at the Doha trade talks were too little, too late.
In the case of the US, the cap offered was double what it paid its farmers last year, giving it substantial room to provide more assistance if deemed necessary.
The EU cap was significantly higher than the subsidies it is expected to pay in the next few years.
Unfair competition
Even if these offers had been accepted, the prospect remained that poor farmers in developing countries would face unfair competition from subsidised, rich country exports.
A truly pro-poor outcome to the talks would have been greater market access globally for farmers from developing countries, and mandatory, sizeable reductions in the 'domestic support' or subsidies that the US and EU pay their agricultural producers.
It would also have given developing countries the ability to defend their poor and vulnerable farmers from cheap imports.
Vulnerable
This is what special products (SP), and the special safeguard mechanism (SSM) on which the talks foundered, aimed to achieve.
The SP exemption would have given developing countries the ability to preserve tariffs on a selection of their most important products to protect livelihoods.
The SSM would have given developing countries the right to impose or raise tariffs once imports increased above a certain level.
Protection
The US insisted that the trigger should be a 40% increase, which developing countries argued was far too high to offer real protection.
The Doha Development Round was supposed to help developing countries prosper through trade. Promoting development is now an established object in global economic governance.
The EU should remember this in its drive to sign up African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries to economic partnership agreements (EPAs).
Concerned
Christian Aid remains deeply concerned that, in return for access to European markets, these agreements require quicker trade liberalisation than ACP countries can manage.
Following the collapse of the Doha talks, Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, tried to sound positive, saying that members had ‘successfully converged’ on 18 out of 20 discussion topics.
'Convergence', however, does not mean ‘agreement’. It simply means that WTO members had started to reach agreement. But success could only have been determined by the extent to which any final deal supported the interests of poorer countries.
Development
One positive aspect of the talks was that they showed how the wealthier developing countries are now able to champion the pursuit of development more effectively.
As they grow richer and more powerful, Christian Aid hopes that they will continue to support less developed countries in their efforts to escape poverty.
Matthew Coghlan is Christian Aid's senior economic justice advisor