3. Environment

Background

Liberalization of investment and the opening of trade through the free trade agreements signed to date, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement, have had severe social and environmental impacts on peoples and workers. The peoples of the Americas aspire to an international economy based on different principles—an economy that makes sustainability a priority.

The problem with classic trade and investment policy from an environmental perspective is that it "externalizes" (does not account for) environmental and social costs, while fostering more intense energy use, over-exploitation of natural resources, and damage to biodiversity, all of which erode the underlying basis of the economy and society.

Such policies intensify the expropriation of genetic resources, the destruction of natural ecosystems, environmental degradation in agricultural and urban areas, environmental deregulation, and the violation of the individual and collective civil rights of generations present and future.

Environmental degradation has also had a disproportionate effect on people living in poverty, especially women, as these groups tend to live with the impact of contaminated habitats and resources in places where there is less political will to improve conditions. Supporters of these policies view components of sustainable development as limitations to trade (e.g., food security, the protection of collective wisdom about and use of biodiversity, the sustainable use of ecosystems and the existence of fair and equitable ways of sharing the benefits of natural resources). Governments for the most part have rejected these ideals, yielding instead to international market pressures.

Environmental concerns cut across all topics. Therefore the points set out below are taken up more concretely or complemented in other chapters, such as those on energy and intellectual property rights.

Guiding Principles

• The precedence of environmental accords signed by the governments of the Americas should be established in the negotiations around, and agreements on, investment and trade. Environment and sustainability should not be limited to a single area of economic-financial accords, but rather be addressed as an overarching dimension and perspective throughout any such agreements.

• Quality of development should be a key priority. Governments should establish social and environmental limits to growth on the basis of environmental sustainability and social equity.

• International trade agreements and nation states should establish plans to gradually internalize environmental and social costs arising from unsustainable production and consumption. If this leads to higher prices, governments should conduct awareness-raising campaigns to encourage high-income consumers to purchase goods produced in a sustainable way.

• The environmental costs of transition to trade and investment practices that are fair and environmentally sustainable should be dealt with equitably, acknowledging that the parties to an agreement may have different responsibilities for achieving common goals.

• Governments should recognize that there is an existing ecological debt among nations. This has resulted from richer nations occupying an "exaggerated environmental space," meaning that they utilize and exploit a share of the world's natural resources that is disproportionate to their population and territory.

• Governments should establish strict timelines to end international trading of products that harm the environment. During the transition period, tariffs should be imposed to discourage trade in such products and prevent their use.

• Environmental regulations should be governed by the precautionary principle (i.e., the principle that, when in doubt, we should take the most environmentally cautious course of action), rather than risk assessment (which applies economic cost-benefit analysis to environmental resources).

• Trade should be accompanied by incentives for the conservation of soil and natural resources and to reduce and move towrds the elimination of chemicals that damage the environment. It should encourage sustainable development and production close to the place/site of consumption.

• Social and ecological dumping should be rejected.

• Trade liberalization must not hinder countries' capacity to channel foreign investment toward those sectors in which sustainable development can be strengthened.

• Trade and investment liberalization must not hinder the regulation and control of companies and investors to ensure compliance with a country's sustainable development objectives.

• Foreign companies and investors should be held to the highest environmental standards, and obliged to share technologies that preserve the environment and create jobs.
• Countries should maintain their sovereignty over the right to restrict investment that aggravates social or environmental problems and their disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable sectors of society, such as women and indigenous peoples.

Specific Objectives

Forests and Sustainable Energy

Sustainable energy development is predicated on respect for the right of communities, energy savings, and the fight against excessive energy consumption. Energy sources should be renewable, clean and low-impact, and equitable, democratic access to them must be ensured.

Energy integration should be a process that allows for the growth of potential and for cooperation among different countries, under equitable conditions that reflect each nation's economic, social and cultural characteristics.

Therefore, the following are proposed:

• Redirect investment, loans and subsidies toward clean-energy projects and energy efficiency based on equity of access and national priorities, including sustainable transport; giving precedence to public over private, and democratic access to energy for residential, craft, business and industrial use.

• Eliminate direct and indirect subsidies for fossil-fuel energy.

• Develop a legislative and institutional base for the promotion of sustainable energy production. This entails support for clean energy research and dissemination capacity.

• Declare a moratorium on coal, natural gas and oil exploration in new areas as part of the transition to clean, renewable and low-environmental-impact energy sources.

• Respect the right of communities in areas affected by energy production, especially indigenous communities.

• Enforce the use of environmental impact studies for all energy-related projects.

Mining

Mining in the Americas has involved many decades of heavy metal pollution and the destruction of land and sea habitats, as well as threats to the health and safety of mine workers and their families, who often live near hazardous work-sites and suffer effects to their physical and reproductive health due to contact with such contamination. These conditions are present throughout the hemisphere and reflect the inability of the public sector to control effectively the environmental impact of this activity.

The accelerated expansion of mining carried out by international companies has not been accompanied by stronger controls, regulations or safeguards for human or environmental health. Rather, it has generated a demand for greater use of resources such as water and energy.

Therefore, the governments of the Americas must ensure the following:

• The development of mining must be approved in advance by the communities that will be affected, especially when it would have an impact on other production or soil use. The land rights of indigenous communities must be respected.

• Implement and enforce the highest health and safety standards for workers and environmental protection as conditions for mining development.
• Declare a moratorium on mining exploration and development in ecologically and culturally significant areas.

• Establish priorities and incentives in mining aimed at reducing consumption and increasing the efficiency of mineral processing.

• Revisit the recommendations presented by non-governmental groups at the Sustainable Development Summit held in Santa Cruz in December 1996.

Biodiversity and Intellectual Property

Conservation of biodiversity has been the responsibility of thousands of communities which use and cultivate resources for subsistence rather than for profit. The international exchange of the resources of biodiversity has historically been of benefit to many peoples, although benefits have been distributed less equitably over the last decades. Conservation and development of genetic resources in "scientific" centres, combined with institutionalized intellectual property systems, has caused looting and monopolization of genetic resources.

The hemisphere of the Americas currently faces enormous threats to its biodiversity from international trade liberalization treaties and the actions of multinational corporations. This creates a tremendous challenge to citizens, leading to the following demands (for a broader discussion of proposals on intellectual property, see Chapter 11):

• Reject intellectual property claims over life-forms and associated knowledge.

• Recognize and protect collective rights of local communities in the conservation and raising of species within biodiversity. This requires collective rights to community property (which in many communities is the historic knowledge transmitted by women) to take precedence over the provisions of any trade treaty or intellectual property instrument.

• Based on ILO Convention 169, ensure the inalienable right of peoples and "traditional black and indigenous communities" to full autonomy in decisions over their traditional habitats and the biodiversity associated with them, and the use and management of same, according to their cultural systems and traditional rights.

• Ensure the precedence of the Biological Diversity Convention over trade agreements.

• Guarantee free circulation of knowledge and access to genetic resources for research in the service of the needs of local communities and residents, as well as to public research centres.

• Recognize and compensate communities that create and conserve biodiversity for the historical ecological debt owed them because of profits made by others through genetic resources and associated knowledge. Trade and investment accords must incorporate international cooperation for the preservation of biodiversity.

• Promote joint accords between governments and civil society over a country's right to discover, conserve and have primary use and benefit of the biological and genetic properties of plants and animals in the region where they are found.