“Climate change” has gone missing in trade talks between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries.
Top U.S. trade negotiators appear to be trying to steer their counterparts away from even using the phrase in the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, a leaked summary of the the U.S.’s most recent proposal seems to show. The document indicates that the White House’s rewrite would replace “trade and climate change” as the title of a section with “transition to a low-emissions economy.”
That’s not all. The United States also wants to nix references to a United Nations climate change agreement and drop references to “adaptation,” meaning the anticipation of adverse effects of global warming and attempts to minimize the harm ahead of time, according to the summary, which was published by the Peruvian human rights group RedGE.
In a section on biodiversity, the United States’ proposal would expunge language that guarantees the countries’ rights to determine access to their natural and “genetic resources,” a change that would seem to enhance corporate access to those materials, environmental advocates said.
The U.S. proposal is “incredibly disappointing,” said Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program.
“The United States is weakening an already weak text. The proposal should be strongly opposed by other governments, and has to be strengthened,” Solomon said.
The U.S. proposal, circulated to the other countries Feb. 14, is intended to counter the draft environmental chapter published by WikiLeaks in January and could come up for discussion this week when top negotiators meet in Singapore.
A spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said American negotiators there “stand behind the strength of the U.S. proposals” on environmental issues in the deal.
“The misleading story being circulated now is not a complete look at the U.S. effort, and obscures the full range of potential environmental benefits being negotiated in the TPP,” the spokesman said in an email.
A spokeswoman for the USTR also said the United States’ omission of a reference to the UN climate change commitment isn’t meant as a slight, and stressed that the U.S.’s proposed environmental chapter is more tightly focused.
“As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the United States is fully committed and actively working with our partners to negotiate an ambitious agreement in the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” the spokeswoman said.
“The environment chapter of the TPP presents an opportunity to focus on making progress on key, regional conservation issues, and issues where the nexus with trade is clear, such as in our proposals for the first-ever disciplines on fisheries subsidies, and commitments to combat wildlife trafficking and illegal logging,” she said.
The frustration that environmental groups have expressed over the proposed changes on climate change and biodiversity, however, is just the latest example of liberal-leaning groups taking issue with the Obama administration’s approach to trade policy.
The AFL-CIO and other unions have trashed the proposed pan-Pacific agreement, claiming that it will drain away U.S. jobs. They’ve also mounted an intense effort to rally congressional Democrats against key trade authorizing legislation that would clear the way for Congress to vote on the pact with limited debate and no amendments.
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman used a speech at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday to rebut critics of the U.S. effort. He argued that the Pacific deal is the United States’ best chance to shape otherwise lax labor rights and environmental policies overseas.
“The reality is this: Trade, done right, is part of the solution, not the problem,” Froman said.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/trade-leak-shows-uss-weak-environmental-pitch-groups-say-103678.html
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