No longer top secret: The TPP trade deal is just as evil as

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No longer top secret: The TPP trade deal is just as evil as you think it is

[ https://grist.org/business-technology/n ... ink-it-is/ ]

By Heather Smith on 5 Nov 2015

EXCERPT:

So what’s it like now that it’s not top secret? Well, let’s start with the environmental chapter, which lays out this declaration near the start:

1.The Parties recognize the importance of mutually supportive trade and environmental policies and practices to improve environmental protection in the furtherance of sustainable development.

2.The Parties recognize the sovereign right of each Party to establish its own levels of domestic environmental protection and its own environmental priorities, and to establish, adopt or modify its environmental laws and policies accordingly.

3.Each Party shall strive to ensure that its environmental laws and policies provide for, and encourage, high levels of environmental protection and to continue to improve its respective levels of environmental protection.

4.No Party shall fail to effectively enforce its environmental laws through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, after the date of entry into force of this Agreement for that Party.

Particularly, let’s look at No. 3. Each party “shall strive to ensure that its environmental laws and policies provide for, and encourage, high levels of environmental protection.” This is similar language to what was in an earlier, leaked draft, and it’s hard to tell exactly what the legal standard is for not “striving” enough. Not to say that this would happen, but if I were a diplomat from a TPP member nation I could march into the meeting wearing a tutu made of rhino horns. I could be wearing elephant feet over my
own feet like rain boots, and epaulettes made of shark fins, and still claim that I was really striving to improve my levels of environmental protection.

It goes on. Rather than clearly forbidding the trade in illegally logged lumber, the TPP only asks its member nations “to combat” such trade. Illegal fishing? It would be great if member nations would “deter” it, “strive to act consistently with relevant conservation and management measures,” and “endeavor not to undermine catch or trade documentation schemes.”

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But TPP could make the environment even worse. As with NAFTA, companies in member countries will be able to force other member countries into arbitration if they believe that local regulations — environmental or otherwise — are damaging their ability to do business.

For example: Under NAFTA, an American energy company named Lone Pine Resources with rights to mine under the St. Lawrence Seaway sued Canada after the province of Quebec passed a moratorium on mining for oil and gas. In general, the U.S. seems to have won every environment-related case that has come up against it. But the TPP members contain some heavy hitters, industry-wise — like BHP Bilton, an Australian mining company that owns the rights to a fair amount of oil and gas in Texas.

Loopholes and contradictions like this in a trade agreement aren’t surprising. The people who negotiate trade are, well, trade people. Their preoccupations are with pressing issues like why there doesn’t seem to be a single non-bootlegged copy of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters on the entire continent of Asia. These are people who want to open a Mardi Gras bead factory in another country without worrying about getting shaken down by that country’s regional government. They want to sell pharmaceuticals and
televisions and thingamabobs without worrying that someone is going to come up with a slightly different version of what they’re making and undersell them.

That’s fine. It’s not so much that the world needs a trade agreement to protect the environment or stop climate change. That’s not what trade agreements are for. But surely we can ask for a trade agreement that won’t undercut the people trying to make those things happen.