We have seen the rise of political leaders campaigning on nationalist platforms that “take back control” around the world.
Although ostensibly opposed to globalization, these leaders are committed to enforcing secret trade and investment agreements, placing neoliberal privatization above social protection, and thus in terms of workers’ rights and climate, environmental, and food standards. Realize the race to the bottom.
Under these agreements, it is difficult for political leaders to truly protect civilians from health crises (including Covid-19), economic difficulties, and unmitigated climate change.
This Series of articles Published in collaboration with Dalia Gebrial and Harpreet Kaur Paul and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in London.It first appeared in a Global Green New Deal Outlook.
company
Doing so can trigger legal challenges in secret courts through the “Investor-State Dispute Resolution Mechanism” (ISDS)-a mechanism included in many trade and investment agreements.
Several global law firms predict that companies will sue the country for loss of profits due to measures designed to protect the people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sondhya Gupta, the UK campaign manager of SumOfUs, told protector“Obviously, companies should not sue countries for emergency measures to save lives in a global pandemic, and we should not sign trade agreements that allow them to do so.
“We know that low-income countries are struggling most to contain the virus. Wealthy companies threaten them to use much-needed public funds to’compensate’ their lost profits. This will further hinder efforts to fight the virus and increase their burden. In the future, Children and grandchildren.”
As predicted, companies in Spain, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States plan to sue the governments of the Global South because they dare to enact regulations designed to protect communities from the effects of Covid-19.
investor
At the same time, the “Energy Charter Treaty” locks signatories into dependence on fossil fuels.
In May 2017, the British-based oil and gas company Rockhopper sued Italy after the Italian parliament banned new oil and gas operations near the country’s coast due to environmental and seismic risks.
The company seeks compensation for “very significant monetary losses”, including loss of future profits.
Although Italy withdrew from the treaty more than a year before the claim was registered, the claim was filed under the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism (ISDS) of the Energy Charter Treaty.
This is possible because the treaty protects investors for 20 years after a country withdraws, thereby making investors’ interests longer than the public’s political will.
patent
In fact, even if investors lose their rights, states will incur substantial legal costs in defending health, employment, social protection, or climate regulations designed to protect us and our environment.
These arbitration mechanisms do not meet the basic standards of judicial independence and fairness, and threaten the country’s responsibility to act in the interests of its citizens and the planet.
For this reason, public interest groups, trade unions, and academia call on governments to oppose the type of investor-state arbitration included in the treaty.
In addition, the intellectual property system embedded in trade and investment agreements makes it more difficult for people to obtain affordable medicines and green energy, and prevents farmers from saving seeds.
In addition to the race to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, there is an rush to apply for patents for such developments, which may hinder universal or even widespread access to what may be the most needed vaccine in the world.
Worker
Although public research and funding have made the development of almost all Covid-19 drugs possible, the licensing program will hand over these treatments to for-profit companies, who will then control access to universal public goods; allowing them to profit from the pandemic .
We did not learn from the mistakes and mistakes of the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s, but repeated the same mistakes again.
Global trade agreements have also actively promoted well-known violations of labor and environmental standards throughout the global supply chain.
The goods are produced in areas with limited workers’ rights and environmental regulations, and hardly any local standards are enforced-these conditions are implemented to provide global companies with the promise of cheap land and labor.
In addition to factor labor, international trade requires millions of cheap informal port workers to facilitate the transfer of commodities such as food, beverages, clothes, jewelry, toys, medicines, vehicles, minerals, metals, and chemicals.
Emissions
The “cheap” of these workers is due to the fact that many of them are immigrants working in dangerous environments, the rights recognized by the state are limited (or not), and many of them are women of ethnic minorities. In other words, they are people with a lower political and social power structure.
At the same time, pollution caused by the transportation of these items between ports and the places where consumers use them is not included in the emissions targets of our international climate change agreement, the Paris Agreement.
This omission has a huge impact because the shipping industry emits more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year-all but the top five emitters.
The International Maritime Organization believes that these emission levels will further increase in the next ten years. Although goods and commodities move freely, the carbon embedded in their movement is not regulated, and workers who mine, assemble or pack them are often trapped.
in principle
In these ways, trade agreements systematically deepen global inequality, climate collapse, and worker exploitation.
Therefore, resolving trade and investment agreements must be an important step in taking justice-oriented actions against climate change, health inequality, and economic injustice.
As long as these treaties remain intact, no real progress can be made in global climate justice. In fact, even agreements reached on the premise that trade should not be at the expense of the environment or labor conditions, and-on the contrary-promote sustainable development, have largely failed to realize this potential.
They also failed to acknowledge the historical reasons-deep-rooted colonialism and slavery-why some countries have the right to determine the terms of trade and investment, while others do not.
On a global scale, new trade transactions will be embedded in this historical understanding, and a new way of thinking will be needed to think about who can access what, and the principles that underpin international relations.
transparent
More directly, an impact assessment of the climate, environment, and labor conditions affected by trade should examine the cross-cutting challenges faced by paid and unpaid workers who make global trade possible.
Trade agreements can require reducing carbon emissions, ensuring that deforestation is prevented, protecting the rights of indigenous peoples, requiring decent work, and ensuring that foreign investors pay for social protection programs through active taxation.
However, the countries negotiating these trade agreements must not forget their different responsibilities in funding the work required to turn these commitments from paper into action.
Civil society can continue to play a role in monitoring whether trade and investment conditions are met, and law enforcement actions need to be taken through independent, transparent, accessible, and binding dispute resolution procedures and mechanisms.
These authors
Harpreet Kaur and Dalia Gebrail are curators and editors View Global Green New Deal, Where this article originally appeared.
