Trade Liberalization Conflicts with Morally-Conscious

Trade Liberalization Conflicts with Morally-Conscious
Environmental Policies
Type of document Research Paper
Single spaced No
Subject area Business and Marketing
Academic level Master
Writing style Harvard
Writing language English (U.K.)
Number of sources 3
Number of pages 2 page(s) / approximately 550 words
Order deadline 2011-08-14 23:00
Order additional information
this is an Example how it should be I think a Report or something like that
Topic selected:

Trade liberalization encourages trade in products that create global
pollution (“pollution havens”).

1. The party you represent:
Against Free Trade
2. Your party’s interests or objectives
To support the argument that the free trade is affecting the
environment, specially generating pollution
3. Your party’s assertion
It is evident that the free trade agreements have been developed by
the largest and more developed countries to protect their economies,
but not to protect the environment for future generations
Anti Free Trade Arguments
“For decades, governments have worked together through the United
Nations to develop agreements to protect the natural resources of our
shared planet. Unfortunately, so-called “free trade agreements”
threaten to erode many of the advances in global environmental
protection, endangering our planet and the natural resources necessary
to support life. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and
certain agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) were written
to prioritize rights for corporations over protections for our shared
environment”
It is cleared in most of the economic blocs, where they established
the rules of the free trade, that the environment s not the priority
of the agreements and in some cases countries are avoiding to pursue
this topic, because internally, they are pressure by the big
corporations to limit this environment regulations, because they are
affecting the environment with their production process, raw materials
they are using, and or type of packaging used.
As an example in Colombia, where I came from, still there are
multinationals as Gillette and other US Corporations in the Cosmetic
industry using aerosol packages, that have been demonstrated are
affecting the ozone.
” These new agreements threaten global biodiversity, would accelerate
the spread of genetically engineered (GE) crops, increase natural
resource exploitation, further degrade some of the most critical
environmental regions on the planet, and erode the public’s ability to
protect our planet for future generations”.
One of the facts now is the food required by the world population, and
then the GE crops have been increased eroding the lands and reducing
their capacity to renew the process of production. The industry of the
Furniture is affecting the water availability for example eroding the
lands where they implement those GE, and the cut of enormous forests
areas, brought deserts to those lands, reducing the capacity to the
agriculture, and affecting the environment, creating not only
devastation, but environmental risks to the population
No Protections for the Environment
“Require member countries to adopt internationally recognized
standards for environmental protection. Nor does either agreement
ensure that member countries don’t lower or waive their existing
environmental laws in an effort to attract investment. What’s more,
rules in CAFTA and the FTAA would actually prohibit member countries
from enacting many new environmental regulations, allowing those
regulations to be challenged as “barriers to trade.” This strips the
public from a fundamental democratic right to pass laws that protect
our environment in favor of corporations’ “right” to profit from
environmental destruction”.
It is very sad to see how the countries focus on attracting
investments from bigger economies without limiting and establishing
strong regulations to protect the environment. The pollution created
in some places not only affected the environment but makes the people
sick, as in one of the cities in Colombia, where the Cement Industry
is concentrated, where the environmental rules besides of weak, have
not been implemented requesting this industry to improve the air
protection.
More GE Contamination
“Dozens of crops have been developed and domesticated in the Americas
over the last 10,000 years, including corn and potatoes, two of the
world’s most important crops for food security. The traditional
cradles of food diversity are threatened by encroaching genetic
contamination. The experience of Mexico under NAFTA offers an example
of what’s to come for Central America under CAFTA. NAFTA forced open
protected Mexican corn markets to a flood of cheap imports of corn
from the U.S. Corn imports into Mexico have displaced at least one and
a half million farmers and are steadily eroding the genetic diversity
of thousands of native corn varieties. Then, in September 2001,
genetic contamination of native corn varieties was discovered as a
result of the introduction of artificially low-priced GE corn from the
United States under NAFTA. The expansion of GE crops threatens food
security around the world.”
We have found in many undeveloped countries the same fact found above,
limiting or disappearing the natural crops, just to obtain profits, no
matter the usage of this GE will bring erosion to the lands, because
the big corporations are acting short term, because is not their lands
A Bill of Rights for Corporations?
“While limiting public regulation for environmental protections, CAFTA
and the FTAA would grant expansive powers to corporations. CAFTA’s
investor protections are modeled after one of the most hotly contested
sections in NAFTA—its Chapter 11—a virtual Bill of Rights for
corporations. These provisions allow corporations to sue governments
for “damages” if a government law affects their profits. Chapter 11 of
NAFTA has undermined the sovereignty of democratically elected
governments, and their ability to act in the public interest. An issue
over a Quebec environmental law banning specific pesticides reveals
how these provisions undermine environmental protection”.
Here is another demonstration how the lobby and the strength of
multinational corporations to go over the laws established by
governments to protect their population against the risks of a damaged
environment. We could see now undeveloped countries, which exported
different natural foods to the developed countries, now importing,
because they ended after being self sufficient countries in nations
that need to bring food to their people tables.
Limiting Public Regulations
“An agreement currently under negotiation in the WTO covering Services
would make it increasingly difficult for governments to regulate and
limit multinational corporate activity in environmentally-damaging
activities such as oil extraction, forestry, electricity generation,
road construction, and waste incineration in the interests of
environmental protection.
In addition, under the proposed WTO rules on Services, governments
could be required to let foreign corporations violate environmental
standards. For instance, requirements that that a percentage of
electricity be produced from environmentally-friendly energy sources
could be found to “discriminate” against a foreign service companies
if those companies don’t provide environmentally-friendly energy, and
would have to be scrapped under proposed WTO rules — even if the
standard is the most effective way to protect the environment”.
This another argument that demonstrates the influence of big
multinationals to violate the environment regulation with the support
of the WTO rules
Natural Resources and the WTO
“Corporate interests are also negotiating the expansion of the WTO
through an agreement on Non-Agricultural Market Access, or NAMA.
Primarily involving industrial manufactured goods, NAMA also includes
trade in natural resources such as forest products, gems and minerals,
and fishing and fish products. NAMA aims to reduce tariffs as well as
decreasing or eliminating so-called Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs), which
can include measures for environmental protection and community
development.
Eliminating tariffs in natural resources would dramatically increase
their exploitation. The World Forum of Fish-harvesters and
Fish-workers has warned of the devastation to fish conservation posed
by NAMA. Even the U.S. Trade Representative has acknowledged that
eliminating tariffs on wood products would dramatically increase
logging, exacerbating deforestation in some of the world’s most
sensitive forests.
The WTO has already identified a wide range of environmental policy
tools as potential ‘barriers to trade': the certification of
sustainably-harvested wood and fish products; restrictions on trade in
harmful chemicals; and packaging, marketing and labeling requirements
such as organic and Fair Trade labeling”.
Finally, it is true that based on the WTO rules, the multinationals
have been promoted to go into other countries, violate the
regulations, affecting the environment, under the excuses of the free
trade, claiming non legal regulations against them.
Can the conflicting positions in these debates be resolved? If yes,
how? If not, why not? Your answer should be well-reasoned and
supported with examples.
In my personal opinion is a long fight, we must give to those WTO
rules that allows other companies to affect the environment, but if
the governments and the people act together, maybe we have an
opportunity to save the future of our world for the new generations.
In our case, we developed as a Corporation a plan to protect our
rivers from contamination produced by the chemicals of the detergents,
creating a national club with more than 100,000 kids. We promote the
day of the earth, requesting people to use bio-degradable products as
the laundry bars or detergents with bio-degradable raw materials. The
results were the growth in 40% the usage of laundry bars produced from
tallow and the launching of new detergents with special protected
formula by Colgate, Lever and Procter
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wto/Environment.html

By admin in Essays on August 23, 2015