Because It's Important: More Analysis of the Draft Environment Chapter of the TPP

From Michael Burns, ED, Sierra Club:

“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush’s. This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues – oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections – and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts.”[b

From Professor Jane Kelsey of Aukland University, NZ:

"Australia, New Zealand the US and Canada were the four countries that voted against the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which recognizes indigenous rights in relation to genetic resources and biodiversity.

Parties have divergent positions on Multilateral Environmental Agreements. The US has not signed the Convention on Biological Diversity and very few of the twelve countries have signed or ratified the subsequent Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. The US is also not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.


http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/01/15/a-public-relations-exercise-tpp-agreement-chapter-for-environment-released-by-wikileaks/

More from NRDC:

http://www.nrdc.org/media/2014/140115.asp


Let's recap: As written, the draft chapter provides exactly NO enforcement in any environmental area. None. Shark finning? Nope. Weird lotteries to slaughter endangered animals? Nope. Nothing, nothing and nothing. And the U.S. which has taken an extraordinarily tough stance on issues like intellectual property right, has been down right meek about environmental protection. We have a law that all trade agreements are supposed to adhere to, called the May 10th agreement. It's being ignored by the USTR.

Here's the May 10th Agreement

http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/factsheets/2007/asset_upload_file127_11319.pdf