For Better Or Worse

Can this be right? Can corporations have more power over environmental and health regulations than governments? Surely there must be some mistake. A mis-wording in NAFTA that is being abused, perhaps? A loophole that got by the lawyers? A phrase meant to allow for constructive and positive aspects of trade that is being misappropriated for the benefit of a few greedy corporations?

Unfortunately none of those is the case. NAFTA’s Chapter 11 is there on purpose. Similar or worse provisions have been included in subsequent trade deals and are planned for future trade agreements. Trade, it seems, cannot be conducted profitably without forcing some level of environmental devastation upon those who want neither the trade deals nor the devastation that goes with them.

Trade, in the form it is practised by the wealthy governments of the world and organisations like the WTO, depends very much on major corporations being able to do as they please. These corporations are not interested in sound environmental policies, they are interested in turning a profit.

Even when there are specific treaties that ban specific actions are in place, they are sometimes ignored or loopholes are sought out. On October 22, 2002, CBC’s Marketplace aired a segment on what happens to our hi-tech equipment once we no longer want it. The answer? Some of Canada’s hi-tech garbage finds its way to China where our toxic waste affects the people there. In an effort to survive they are stripping the computers of copper and gold. The average computer has many other toxic, but less valuable materials. The people are exposing themselves to heavy metal poisoning and neurological disorders because of our junk.

China has banned the importation of toxic waste, but the waste still finds its way in through bribe and back-door payments.

Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention, a treaty saying that we won’t ship our toxic wastes to poor countries. So how can we be doing just that? The Canadian government doesn’t consider old computer equipment to be toxic waste until it is dismantled. We are the only industrialised nation to make that distinction. Computers aren’t toxic waste when assembled but are when disassembled.

The US is the only industrialised nation that has not ratified the amendment to the Basel convention that is known as the “Basel Ban.” Although the US is an original signatory it sought to weaken or completely get rid of the Basel Ban. George Bush has refused to ratify the ban. The basic argument is the same as usual...ratifying the treaty may have a detrimental effect on the profits of large US-based corporations.

Shipping toxic waste across borders and an insistence on access to markets for products that countries could do without are not the only environmental issues being brought forth through globalization. There is also the matter of setting up factories that produce toxic waste or are otherwise harmful to the environment in developing countries. Developing countries tend to have lower environmental standards as well as lower wages. Their governments, whether due to poor economic conditions or corruption, are more likely to be bullied into allowing exemptions from existing rules or just looking the other way when infractions occur.

The various trade deals that exist do not use trade as way to improve environmental conditions in developing countries, instead preferring to allow the lack of regulations in developing countries to be used as a drawing card for economic development. This drawing card works. If you look at the products around any house you will find an increasing number of them are made in developing nations. Many of those nations do not have the environmental laws to protect themselves polluters. Meanwhile the wealthy nations that are home to the corporations resist attempts to put environmental standards into trade deals, saying that such standards limit opportunities for countries to develop and insisting on higher environmental standards are an imposition on the sovereignty of developing nations.

What is more of an imposition on sovereignty is destroying the health and well-being of a country’s environment and citizens so that people in rich nations can have cheap electronic toys and running shoes. It does point to a catch-22 though. How can we encourage countries to develop without going through the same, or worse, environmental problems that have been experienced in the industrialised nations of the world? Is the environment more important than the development and modernisation of developing nations?

There is no single answer. Dictating environmental policies to developing nations is a form of imperialism. So is allowing large corporations to dictate that such policies should not exist or should be extremely weak. It’s a large and complex debate. It is also a debate that has largely excluded the governments and people most affected...those in the developing nations.

The confusion of that debate is also used by some to justify inaction or regressive action when it comes to other environmental concerns. At a televised forum in Calgary about Kyoto in Canada David Suzuki was asked why Canada should ratify an accord that did not restrict emissions by developing nations. Suzuki said, “Because it is our mess.”

That’s pretty succinct and clear, but the same question arises again and again. The implication is that if we do not force the same environmental restrictions on others as we place on ourselves, that we are somehow losers and that we should loosen our restrictions on ourselves.

Suzuki is right. It is our mess. We need to clean it up. Does that also mean that we should allow, even encourage, others to make the same mistakes we have? Since we will be, one way or another, imposing our wills on developing nations should we not at least try to help them to avoid making the same mistakes as we have made? Should we not be helping them with newer, cleaner technologies to go along with the immense profits being made and shipped back to the already wealthy nations?

It might cause our consumer goods to cost a little more and some large companies might show slightly less profit, but environmental restrictions can be included in trade agreements. If corporations were required to meet the standards of their own countries or the countries where the goods they produce are destined to be sold, it would still allow them to profit, though not as much, and the benefits to the developing countries would increase in the form of technology and jobs.

More and more the way we treat developing countries and each other is dictated solely by profit margins. Instead of using trade to spread environmental equity, we use a lack of environmental equity to promote profit.

Canada, more through its size and station on the world stage than anything else, is less guilty than other developed nations. That still leaves us far from innocence. With our unique place on this planet we can and should be promoting an end to the idea that profits are more important than environmental concerns in foreign countries.

We need to make a choice, for better or worse, how Canada deals with these issues. Right now we just follow the most convenient lead. That’s no choice at all.

---
Recommended links:

North American Free Trade Agreement
Bush may undercut hazardous waste treaty
The Basel Convention
International Institute for Environment and Development
The Trade and Environment Database

---
Reverend Blair was raised in Saskatchewan and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He comes from a long line of social activists and cried on Tommy Douglas before his first birthday. His column appears biweekly on Vive le Canada.

Note: North American Free Tra... Bush may undercut hazar... The Basel Convention International Institute... The Trade and Environme...