Peru trade disaster replicated in TPP
Adam Weissman
-------- Forwarded Message --------
| Subject: | ***SPAM*** Peru trade disaster replicated in TPP |
|---|---|
| Date: | Wed, 13 Apr 2016 15:36:54 -0400 (EDT) |
| From: | Melanie, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch <gtw...@citizen.org> |
| Reply-To: | gtw...@citizen.org |
| To: | ad...@tradejustice.net |
Adam,
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S.-Peru trade
deal being signed. That agreement provides a stark warning about
the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) environmental threats.
Urge
your member of Congress to oppose the TPP.
The Peru pact was the first trade agreement to have an
enforceable environment chapter.
Its backers promised that these terms would preserve Amazonian
rainforests and curb wildlife trafficking. It was supposed to
prohibit rollbacks on environmental standards and human rights.
The TPP’s environment chapter is based on these very terms.
But in 2014, the Peruvian government enacted a package of laws
aimed at attracting foreign investment by weakening
environmental and labor safeguards.(1) The trade agreement made
no difference, even with a Democratic president responsible for
enforcing it.
The laundry list of illegal timber violations in Peru is
well-documented.
Even the government of Peru revealed in 2014 that out of all the
wood slated for export, 78 percent had been harvested illegally.
In 2015, that number jumped to 94 percent.
Were illegal timber operations stopped? Were timber industry
rule-breakers jailed? No, these findings led only to the firing
of the head of Peru’s forestry oversight agency.(2) And despite
outcry from citizens and civil society organizations here and in
Peru, the U.S. has largely turned a blind eye.
Sadly, in Peru, those who stand up for the forests and their
indigenous communities are often met with intimidation and
even death.
There have been dozens of assassinations of environmental
activists in the Peru deal’s 10 years. In 2014, Peru was ranked
the fourth most dangerous country in the world to be an
environmentalist.(3)
The most heinous example in this tragic saga occurred on June 5,
2009, in what is called the “Bagua Massacre.” Several thousand
indigenous demonstrators, including many women and children,
convened to protest against decrees providing new access to
exploit their Amazonian lands for oil, gas and logging that had
been enacted to comply with the pact’s investor rights
requirements. Peruvian security forces attacked the protesters
and 32 people were killed.(4)
Email
your representative to reverse this horrifying trend by
stopping the TPP.
The Peru deal also provides an outrageous example of how
corporations can use the investment provisions of trade deals —
like those in the TPP — to challenge domestic policies and
demand taxpayer compensation.
For years, a company known as Doe Run Peru repeatedly neglected
its contractual obligations to clean up its metallic smelter
complex in La Oroya, Peru — one of the most lead-polluted sites
on earth.
When the Peruvian government finally refused to grant the
company a third extension to meet its environmental obligations,
Doe Run’s parent company, the U.S.-based Renco Group Inc., then
sued the government of Peru in an investor-state arbitration
tribunal for $800 million. Pollution from a reopened plant
continued, and the corporate tribunal has yet to rule about
compensation.
As terrible as all these accounts are, the TPP — which
includes the U.S., Peru and 10 other countries — is even worse
than the Peru deal.
In fact, while the Peru agreement required signatories to
implement and enforce in their domestic laws the environmental
standards of seven multilateral environmental agreements, the
TPP includes only one of these standards. Yes, the TPP’s
environmental chapter rolls back the environmental standards for
trade deals set during the George W. Bush administration.
And the TPP expands on the sinister investment rules of the Peru
deal, newly empowering 9,200 additional foreign companies to
challenge U.S. laws and 19,000 additional U.S. companies to
attack environmental policies in the other TPP countries.
First, we need our members of Congress to prevent further
harm by stopping the TPP.
Then, we need a new model of trade that puts people and the
planet first.
Email
your representative now to stop the TPP.
Thanks for all you do.
In solidarity,
Melanie Foley
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
Sources:
1. “Peru’s
story haunts the TPP” in The Hill
2. Sierra
Club’s “The Peru Trade Deal Turns 10”
3. Global
Witness’ “Peru’s Deadly Environment”
4. “Fatal
Clashes Erupt in Peru at Roadblock” in The New York Times
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