by Victoria Brandon, Redwood Chapter Chair
As has been previously reported, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive trade deal being negotiated among twelve countries in the Pacific Rim, an area of immense environmental sensitivity that includes both Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and part of the Amazon rainforest—two of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for about one third of all the threatened species in the world, some of them in rapid decline, and illegal logging in a number of TPP countries threatens both natural forests and the communities dependent upon them.
Trade agreements should strengthen environmental and climate protections, not undermine them, but the TPP puts corporate profits before communities and the environment. At a minimum, a sound environment chapter should:
- include the same dispute settlement provisions as commercial chapters;
- ensure that countries uphold and strengthen their domestic environmental laws and policies and their obligations under multilateral environmental agreements; and
- address the special environmental challenges of the region by including enforceable prohibitions on trade in illegally taken timber, wildlife, and fish.
Instead, the TPP proposes to follow the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by allowing corporations to sue governments directly—for unlimited cash compensation—over almost any domestic environmental or other law that the corporation alleges reduces its ability to profit. Such cases would be determined special trade tribunals that are unaccountable to any other national or international authority—not only undermining health and environmental protections, but doing so in a completely opaque and irresponsible manner.
The TPP would also require the U.S. Department of Energy to give automatic approval to all natural gas exports to TPP countries, thus inevitably leading to an increase in fracking in this country, and probably to increased electricity prices here as well.
Earlier this year the administration asked Congress to cede Fast Track trade promotional authority to the executive branch, thus limiting the role of Congress to a straight up-or-down vote on the pact—with no room for amendments and limited floor debate. The Sierra Club and our partners in the labor movement fought hard to defeat Fast Track, and came within a whisker of prevailing, but after a complex series of arcane political maneuvers President Obama got the negotiating authority he sought late in June.
It is by no means certain that all the members of Congress who voted for Fast Track will support the TPP itself when it comes before them in the fall or (more likely) some time early in 2016. All over the nation, Sierra Club lobbyists and volunteers have taken advantage of the August recess to express gratitude to legislators who voted against Fast Track, and to use their powers of persuasion on those who went the other way. Here in Redwood Chapter, all three members of our stellar Congressional delegation (Congressmen Jared Huffman, John Garamendi, and Mike Thompson) voted against Fast Track, and all three are expected to oppose the TPP treaty when it finally comes before them, but they will all be subject to intense lobbying pressure from special interest groups and from the administration, and they need to know that their constituents are behind them.
Please take a moment to contact your Congressman to thank him for his vote against Fast Track, and to encourage him to oppose the TPP. They all accept emails from constituents through their Congressional websites, or you can call 415 258-9657 (Huffman); 530 753-5301 (Garamendi); and 707 226-9898 (Thompson). Please tell the aide who answers (or the message machine) that you are calling at the request of the Sierra Club.
For more information on Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, please contact Courtenay.Lewis@sierraclub.org