WTO Controversy Over Forest Tariffs, and Other Concerns
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11/30/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
A truly diverse group of people; the vast majority of whom are deeply
committed, rightfully concerned, and non-violent, are this week
delivering a simple message to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
during their meetings in Seattle: WTO sponsored "trade
liberalization is lowering standards for environmental protection,
public health and food safety." To many, this is not about trade
being bad. It is more about determining when expanded trade should,
or should not, be pursued, and at what cost. There is nothing
magical or sacrosanct about trade. It is one of many values that may
lead to policy that enriches a community. But not at the expense of
living wages, genetically polluted "Frankenfoods", and decimation of
the World's ecological systems--including forests.
The WTO is pursuing a "Global Free Logging Agreement," which would
reduce tariffs on forest products, lead to increased forest product
consumption, and greater forest loss. It could also jeopardize bans
on the use of endangered tropical timbers, safeguards to prevent the
importation of invasive species, and certification of timbers that
have been harvested in an ecologically sustainable manner.
Uncontrolled free trade, pursued as an unquestioned mantra by
faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats, threatens the health and well
being of the Planet and all its occupants. Our hearts go out to the
brave, non-violent protestors in Seattle.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title: FOREST Tariffs Controversial at WTO Talks
Source: Environment News Service, http://www.ens.lycos.com/
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 30, 1999
SEATTLE, Washington, November 30, 1999 (ENS) - Ministerial delegates
from 134 World Trade Organization member countries and 34 observer
nations enter the Seattle Conference Center today to open four days
of negotiations that could start a new round of trade talks. Forest
products are on the agenda along with seven other sectors: chemicals,
medical equipment and scientific instruments, environmental goods,
energy, fish, gems and jewelry, and toys.
The downtown area of Seattle is the scene of a giant protest rally of
labor and environmental proponents lobbying for inclusion of their
concerns by official negotiators.
Environmentalists from across the country met Monday to demand that
forest products be removed from the trade talks. "Treat forests not
like commodities to be traded but rather as natural resources to be
conserved," said Rory Cox of the Oakland, California-based Pacific
Environment and Resources Center.
Cox said the group called on the governments represented at the WTO
to halt negotiations on Accelerated Tariff Liberalization on forest
products, to stop discussions on Non-Tariff Measures that threaten
forest protection measures, and to increase protections against
invasive species.
Environmentalists believe that liberalization of forest products
trade should be halted until the U.S. government has complied with
its own laws by involving the public in the negotiations. Without
careful consideration, they fear the trade talks could override
existing U.S. environmental and forest protection laws.
A study by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Council for
Environmental Quality (CEQ) acknowledged that the Accelerated Tariff
Liberalization could lead to environmental impacts through increased
logging rates in such countries as Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia and
to conversion of primary forests to plantations. Although the study
claims that these impacts will be minimal, several separate,
independent studies dispute this claim and suggest that the ATL will
have larger impacts on primary forests, environmentalists said.
"Chile is home to one of the world's last two large tracts of
temperate rainforest," said Miguel Fredes, a staff attorney for FIMA,
a public interest environmental law firm in Chile. "The growth of the
wood chip industry and the conversion of forests into exotic-species
tree plantations constitute the main causes of Chilean native
deforestation. WTO agreements to liberalize tree trade will increase
the loss of Chile's globally unique biodiversity," he said.
But American Forest & Paper Association president and CEO W. Henson
Moore said the USTR/CEQ study "confirms the U.S. forest products
industry's long-held belief that global tariff liberalization will
have little or no adverse impact on the U.S. forest environment, and
that value-added production, an area in which the United States is a
leader, will increase."
In Moore's view the study means that the United States will be able
to supply a larger share of rising world demand for wood and paper
products with "virtually no increase in timber harvests."
The study is "a recognition that U.S. forests -- public and private
-- are sustainably managed through some of the toughest environmental
laws, regulations, and voluntary standards in the world," Moore said
November 2.
The study's finding that the tariff liberalization is not likely to
alter the proportion of world timber harvest in developing countries,
Moore said dispels the contention of environmental groups that tariff
liberalization leads to forest degradation in environmentally-
sensitive countries.
Tariff elimination will reduce the incentive for other countries to
build production capacity beyond the needs of the market, and that
should help keep high-paying manufacturing jobs here in the United
States, the forest industry association president said.
Labor organizations from across the United States are in Seattle
protesting the WTO trade talks, fearing that lowered tariffs will
send their jobs to developing countries where workers are paid far
less.
The entire USTR/CEQ report "Accelerated Tariff Liberalization in the
Forest Products Sector: A Study of the Economic and Environmental
Effects" is available online at:
http://www.ustr.gov/reports/forest.html
ITEM #2
Title: WTO pushes environmental buttons
Activists rally around charge that standards are weakened
Source: MSNBC,
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 30, 1999
Byline: Francesca Lyman
SEATTLE, Nov. 30 - Thousands of protesters clad as sea turtles, ears
of corn, bears and walking forests have filled the streets of
downtown Seattle, clamoring for attention at the World Trade
Organization talks convening here Tuesday. And despite the diversity
of protests, there is a common charge: that WTO-directed trade
liberalization is lowering standards for environmental protection,
public health and food safety.
THE SIERRA CLUB on Monday held a mock Boston Tea Party proclaiming
"No globalization without representation." Activists dressed as
colonial rebels threw overboard "tainted" objects like cans marked
"WTO-dirty gasoline," hormone-treated beef, and shrimp caught in
traps that also kill endangered sea turtles.
Across town, a thousand protesters gathered around Jose Bove, a
French farmer who rose to fame for opposing genetically engineered
foods and trade sanctions against French Roquefort cheese.
Standing in front of a McDonald's in Seattle's busiest shopping
district, Bove blasted the fast-food culture and broke French bread
with farmers who had traveled from as far as Brazil and Eastern
Europe, as they offered wine and other foods in exchange. "Let
farmers raise the good food people want to eat and love to grow,"
Bove said.
CRITICS SEE LOWER STANDARDS
Despite the diversity of protests, there was a common charge: trade
liberalization, carried out by WTO, is lowering standards for
environmental protection, public health and food safety.
In a recent letter to the Clinton administration, a dozen groups,
including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife
Federation and the Center for International Environmental Law,
chastised the WTO for eroding hard-won laws. "WTO rules and
procedures have been used repeatedly to attack environmental laws
that our organizations have worked for decades to create, strengthen
and protect," they charged.
After a day of environmental protests, however, U.S. Trade
Representative Charlene Barshevsky reiterated earlier pledges by the
Clinton administration that the WTO would not stand in the way of
countries' powers to set their own laws.
Those pledges center around a stand taken by President Bill Clinton
last year in which he stated that "international trade rules must
permit sovereign nations to exercise their rights to set protective
standards for health and safety, the environment, and biodiversity.
"Nations have a right to pursue those protections," he added, "even
when they are stronger than international norms."
When the WTO was created in 1995, it promised to protect the
environment and even created a Committee on Trade and the Environment
at the request of the United States. Free trade, in theory, was
supposed to be an engine of growth propelling the world toward
greater wealth - and, with it, the possibility of even strengthening
environmental standards stronger.
"How does a country maintain its role in a trade organization as part
of an international agreement and also maintain its standards for
environmental protection?" That, says John Audley, a White House
spokesman on trade and the environment, is "precisely what we're
wrestling with at the moment."
Where conflicts have arisen, the WTO has final authority in resolving
conflicts. But environmentalists charge that the WTO has always
"resolved" conflicts in a way that favors trade over environmental
protection. In more than half a dozen cases, WTO decisions have
served to weaken existing health and environmental protections, they
say.
"Whoever has the tougher standard gets challenged," contends Brent
Blackwelder, director of Friends of the Earth. "What's to stop
virtually any law that is construed as a trade barrier?"
CONTROVERSIAL RULINGS
Several recent WTO rulings are cited by environmentalists as evidence
of their claims:
* Endangered species. The WTO found that U.S. laws intended to
prevent dolphins from drowning in tuna nets were a barrier to free
trade. As a result, Congress weakened the criteria under which
dolphin safe tuna can be labeled under the Marine Mammal Protection
Act. Likewise, the WTO ruled in favor of a challenge to a U.S. ban on
shrimp caught without the use of devices to let sea turtles escape.
* Clean air. The WTO two years ago ruled in favor of Venezuela when
it challenged the United States for trying to impose its higher
standard on gasoline quality. The United States even weakened its own
Clean Air Act to go along with free trade rules. "I can't speak for
the actual chemistry of the fuel, but our EPA Office of Air (and
Radiation) felt it didn't weaken our air standards," says Audley of
the White House. In general, he adds, "the government feels that the
rules are now written in a way that enables countries to liberalize
trade and safeguard the environment at the same time."
OTHER CONTROVERSIES
Given those precedents and the WTO's nearly autonomous power,
environmentalists fear the trade pact will fuel controversies in
other areas, among them:
* Forests. A WTO proposal to lower tariffs on wood products would
make them cheaper and easier to buy, but it would tend to promote
clearcutting and consumption of these products. The White House
insists that this could be done with no harm to forests. "On
aggregate, the global consumption of forest products wouldn't go up
by more than one percent," says Audley. "Compare that to the fact
that 85 percent of the world's forests are threatened by people's
demand for home heating and fuelwood."
Some environmentalists counter that this would make it much harder to
limit unsustainable logging and could erode other protections, like
export bans on raw logs and safeguards to protect against invasive
species being introduced via wood imports.
* Food safety. Largely because of new trade agreements, food imports
to the United States have doubled since the 1980s. But freer trade
has allowed food to move more freely across borders, with fewer and
more relaxed inspections.
After a U.S. complaint, a WTO panel ruled against a ban on hormone-
treated beef by the European Union, which argued such beef poses
cancer risks.
The next challenge could very well be over genetically modified
crops, which many European and Asian countries have sought to ban.
And polls have shown that most Americans would like to see
genetically modified foods labeled.
* Hazardous waste. Two challenges of national hazardous waste laws
are being made citing the North American Free Trade Agreement. A
California company is seeking compensation because of local
opposition to its building of a hazardous waste facility in Mexico
next to a wildlife refuge. And an Ohio company wants $10 million in
damages it claims it suffered because of Canada's temporary ban on
exports of the chemical PCB.