The "Contaminated" Environmental Chapter of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
by the Colombian Action Network confronting Free Trade and the ALCA — Recalca (Red Colombiana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio y el ALCA — Recalca), February 2007
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1. The Environmental Chapter of the Free Trade Agreement
An environmental chapter has been included in the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. This chapter has the objective of ensuring that exports to the US do not use natural resources where their cost is not reflected in the price of goods, which is defined as environmental dumping.
The U.S. Democratic Party has demanded this chapter in order to protect US production in the face of competition from countries with which it signs agreements. This regulation implies, for example, that the cost of the wood exported by Colombia would not just reflect the cost of cutting it down, but also the cost of replacing it and reforestation, which would make it impossible for Colombian wood to compete with wood produced in the US.
This chapter does not truly seek to protect the environment, but instead limits itself to demanding that the Colombian government comply with its own very lax environmental laws. Colombian environmental legislation has been aggressively reformed in recent years, and compliance with the regulations that do exist is overseen by a government incapable of applying the law; a government that is committed to privatizing its environmental resources in an attempt to attract foreign investment, no matter how predatory it is.
What has been negotiated in the environmental chapter of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia does not guarantee in any form the protection of biodiversity and natural resources. The chapter is explicit in affirming that the countries should assure “the commercial and environmental policies should be mutually supportive” , in other words, environmental legislation should not affect commerce. The levels of environmental protection are exclusively limited to those defined by internal legislation and in Colombia this legislation is being weakened.
This agreement puts a commercial stamp on the environment, allowing natural resources to be seen as products. According to its definition in chapter 10 of the text, investment rights are awarded for “exploitation, extraction, refinement, transport, distribution, or sale” . This permits transnationals to act outside of the environmental legislation of the country, which they could justify as an unnecessary non-tax barrier.
In the same way, the chapter about Intellectual Property opens the possibility of patenting live beings and natural resources. In effect, it says that the countries would try to make “all reasonable efforts” to give patents for plants and animals.
