NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5264

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Alternative Treaty on Trade & Development from Rio
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** Topic: ALTERNATIVE TREATY ON TRADE & SUST **
** Written  6:27 am  Jun 15, 1992 by iatp in cdp:trade.library **
From: IATP <iatp>
Subject: Final Treaty on Trade

/* Written  8:39 pm  Jun  9, 1992 by ax:kdawkins in cdp:unced.treaties */
/* ---------- "Final Treaty on Trade" ---------- */
From: kristin dawkins <kdawkins>
Subject: Final Treaty on Trade

NOTE: The following final text was approved on June 9, 1992 by
the Active Negotiators of the trade work group at the NGOs
International Forum in Rio de Janeiro.

ALTERNATIVE TREATY ON TRADE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Final text - June 9, 1992

WHEREAS:
1) International trade should be conducted with the objectives of
improving the well-being of people, whilst recognizing the need to
promote socially just and ecologically sustainable development and
prudent resource management, in accordance with the precautionary
principle, transparency and participatory democracy.

2) Current negotiations such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement and the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative
perpetuate the predatory model of development which damages the
environment, promotes unlimited consumerism, and further
impoverishes the majority of the peoples in all countries.
International trade should be part of sustainable development
strategies that guarantee the fair distribution of wealth, the
self-determination of peoples, and participatory democracy.
Economic integration should be an instrument of the peoples aiming
at relationships that are not hierarchical but that are
politically, economically and culturally complementary. The
strengthening of multilateral relationships between nations must
be based on the principle of equality.

3) Compensation, working conditions, land use, and the
exploitation of natural resources must be directed towards
sustaining socially and ecologically balanced communities.
Comparative advantage must not be pursued by exploiting people and
nature in inhumane and unsustainable ways.

4) External debt has become an instrument of political domination,
used as leverage by creditor countries to impose the
liberalization of the economies of debtor nations. The effective
loss of sovereignty over their national policies has resulted in
increased poverty and ecological degradation. Debt cancellation
and the retreival of national sovereighty based upon democratic
principles is indispensable to socially just and ecologically
sustainable development.

5) Improving the terms of trade of developing countries,
eliminating distortions caused by unfair trade policies and
preserving the right to enact fair policies are important
prerequisites for achieving sustainability locally and globally.
More specifically, this would require the elimination of export
dumping; reduced tariffs in developed country markets as well as
the elimination of tariff escalation on products of export
interest to developing countries; and the elimination of trade
distortions that inhibit sustainable development such as lower
labor and environmental protection standards. Fair policies
include health, other social, and environmental standards as well
as financial mechanisms enabling countries to implement standards;
the enforcement of those standards and those subsidies that lead
to sustainable natural resources extraction and production
methods; and the use of quantitative import and export
restrictions as well as domestic and multilateral cooperative
policies to manage production and trade in natural resource
products as required to ensure food security, sustainable land use
and sustainable agriculture.

6) Environmentally and socially destructive agricultural trade
practices must be eliminated through open, balanced,
non-discriminatory, multilateral negotiations. Democratic forms of
land ownership, use, and access, are central to the creation of
sustainable food systems and rural communities. Food production
and consumption systems cannot depend on market forces. The
distance and relationship between consumers and producers has to
be narrowed. A full understanding of the whole ecological,
economic and social system of agricultural production,
distribution and consumption is a pre-condition to sustainable
agriculture. The right to food encompasses not only material
aspects such as quantity, access and quality but also cultural
aspects related to food production deriving from sustainable rural
areas and communities.

7) The patenting of intellectual property, which by definition
grants private ownership to discovery and invention, nullifies
collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. In order to address
issues of intellectual property while preserving the rights of
traditional societies using non-patentable living resources, all
patenting of biological resources and life forms should be halted.
The existing international laws of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) under the Paris Convention framework should be
recognized. In addition, existing formal and informal rights and
responsibilities of local communities to biodiversity and
biological resources, along with their contribution to the
improvement and maintenance of biodiversity, should be balanced,
recognized and valued. Trade mechanisms that reduce or restrict
the free flow of ideas and technologies necessary for the
protection of the environment and health must be eliminated.
Mechanisms such as compulsory licensing ensure nations' rights to
use products with broad social value; these rights must not be
compromised by GATT or any other negotiations.

8) Communities, states and nations have the right to set health,
other social, and environmental standards as well as development
priorities as an expression of the desire of societies to protect
their present and future well-being. This right must not be
considered an unfair trade barrier of principles of
non-discrimination, transparency and proportionality are
respected. A test to determine if a policy or standard is a trade
barrier is whether its effect is to discriminate against a product
or a process to protect in an unjustified way domestic producers
or to favor the producers of one country over another. The burden
of proof in such a case must be placed upon the challenging party
to demonstrate that a particular policy or standard is an unfair
trade barrier.

9) People have the right to full access to all scientific
information. Environmental impact assessments, when conducted
transparently, are an essential tool in evaluating the wisdom and
fairness of proposals for multilateral agreements and in
periodically reviewing their effects. International health, other
social, and environmental standards should be a global floor, but
not a ceiling. There are two steps to any standards setting
process: assessment of risk and management of risk. The role of
science is to inform the public on the nature and extent of the
risk, but the decision about what level of risk to accept must be
made by the public through a transparent and democratic process.
Financial and independent technical assistance must be available
to enable all countries to meet minimum international standards in
accordance with the precautionary principle.

10) Decisionmaking processes should rely primarily on
participatory democracy and not market forces. Bilateral and
multilateral institutions must be created democratically and
designed primarily to promote social, economic and environmental
sustainability. Recognizing that new global rules must be adopted
to assure a minimum level of standards worldwide for such critical
issues as environmental protection and human rights, global
regimes and international institutions must be based upon fully
democratic policymaking, decisionmaking and dispute resolution
processes. Full democracy depends upon the implementation of
processes based on principles of subsidiarity -- that
decisionmaking take place at the lower unit of political
organization as possible as well as at the highest level
necessary; transparency, accountability, equity and full
information, and the full participation of civil society. NGOs and
peoples' organizations must have the right to strategically
mobilize the civil society and use their vote, political and
consumer power to make pressure at all levels to influence
international decisionmaking.

11) Conflicts between the provisions of international trade and
environmental agreements must be settled on the basis of maximum
protection of the environment and the best means to achieve
socially just and ecologically sustainable development. Dispute
resolution mechanisms must guarantee transparent and competent
independence. Dispute resolution must be conducted with
transparency and subject to fully democratic processes.
Institutional diversity could allow a wider variety of social,
political and cultural programs to meet a wider variety of needs.
Experimental international institutions should not become
permanent bodies until a full assessment is made by all interested
parties.

12) Trade in armaments should be prohibited. States should comply
with mandatory arms transfer registration, bar transfer of weapons
prohibited under international law (weapons of mass destruction),
and establish an international agency under United Nations
auspices that would be responsible for monitoring, regulating and
eliminating the international arms trade.

13) Transnational coporations must be regulated by open, balanced,
non-discriminatory multilateral mechanisms conducted with
transparency and subject to fully democratic processes.

14) The Draft Final Act of the Uruguay Round of the GATT and the
GATT's February 1992 Trade and Environmental Report discuss
environmental regulations in terms of their functioning as
barriers to trade; they also support the broadest deregulation of
transnational corporate behavior. In addition, the Draft Final Act
proposes expanding and institutionalizing the authority of the
GATT as the Multilateral Trade Organization (MTO) with obligatory
review mechanisms and binding dispute resolution mechanisms
overriding national standard-setting processes. Because the GATT
and the proposed MTO are not currently constituted to strengthen
environmental protection or socially just and ecologically
sustainable development but, instead, to anticipate
trade-distorting impacts in order to minimize potential
regulation, civil society and governments should work to replace
the GATT with a fair, transparent, participatory and democratic
alternative.

THEREFORE, WE PLEDGE:
A) To work to replace GATT with an alternative International Trade
Organization (ITO) designed with a participatory and democratic
structure ensuring transparent, accountable and equitable
decisionmaking in accordance with the public interest instead of
the corporate interest. This will ensure that the ITO develops
social, environmental, and other regulatory policies for global
fair trade and sustainable development including enhanced
preferential terms for developing countries and equitable resource
transfers between countries. Among the policies that a fair ITO
would address are commodity agreements and the terms of trade;
fair compensation and healthy working conditions; allocation of
revenues from environmental taxes and tariffs to enable socially
and environmentally benign production; the elimination of trade in
armaments and toxic waste; regulation of the restrictive business
practices of transnational corporations; macroeconomic policies
including currency exchange rates and debt; and the role of other
global institutions including the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. Finally, the ITO would respect the right of
national democratic decisionmaking in so far as it does not result
in unfair practices, and strengthen cultural diversity.

B) To support alternative models of international trade based on
cooperatives of producers and consumers and federations of
cooperatives working together to avoid multinational enterprise in
commerce between countries of the North and the South.

C) To cooperate with the action plans of the other work groups of
the NGOs International Forum including those on forests,
biodiversity, climate change, sustainable agriculture, militarism,
debt, and transnational corporations.

D) To share information; to cooperate with the broadest possible
network of community-based organizations; to join the electronic
communications network as promptly as possible; to develop a
common bibliography; to develop a common research agenda and
cooperate in conducting and sharing the research; to collaborate
on joint documents and develop collective agreements; to promote
these collective agreements through education and cooperation; to
lobby our respective national and local governments in support of
these collective agreements; to develop and participate in
regional and international forums among NGOs as well as consumer
and producer groups after UNCED; and to draft a comprehensive
document defining our principles, our analysis, and our objectives
in support of our future campaigns.

E) To internalize these objectives in the work of our own
organizations and networks and to commit ourselves to the common
agenda and responsibilities of this treaty.

WORK GROUP: Temple Agnes, SOLAGRAL, France; Josemar Costa de
Oliveira, CUT, Brazil; Maria Clara Couto Soares, IBASE, Brazil;
Kristin Dawkins, IATP, USA; Proulx Denipe, CLE Basses-Laurentides,
Quebec/Canada; David Downes, CIEL, USAQ; Jost Ettlin, InfoCard,
Switzerland; Andreia Fozzatti Buendia, DESEP/CUT, Brazil; Heinz
Greijn, ELCI, Kenya; Christine Harwell, North-South Center,
University of Miami, USA; Marcos V. Kloster, Grupo Ecologico Campo
Gerais, Brazil; Martin Krassney, Commonweal, USA; Bryan Krizek,
Partners in the Environment, USA; Margareta Kulessa, WEED,
University of Mainz, Germany; Bertha E. Lujan, RMALC, Mexico;
Flavia Mello, IBASE, Brazil; Victor Menotti, IATP, USA; Mary Ann
Nelson, Sierra Club, USA; Ted Parson, Harvard Global Environmental
Issues, USA/Canada; Patricia Prieto C., ORIVA, Colombia;  Rani
Rahman, IOSB, Canada; Jose Ramos Regidor, Campagna Nord-Sud, Vania
Roche, Grupo Ecologico Campo Gerais, Brazil; Italy; Sergio
Schlesinger, PACS, Brazil; Jomel Jouo Sortes Lemo, Foro de ONGs,
Brazil; Dart Thalman, SIT, USA; Angelica Tudini, Fondazione eni
Enrico Mattei, Italy; Claude Turmes, FOE, Luxemburg; Halina Ward,
FIELD, United Kingdom; Robert Weissman, Multilnationals and
Development Clearinghouse; USA Christel Zgaga, Bundis 90/Die
Grunen, Germany.  (Note that active participation in the
negotiations does not imply endorsement of the draft.)

COMMENTS SUBMITTED IN WRITING: Charles Abugre, ACORD, United
Kingdom; Rudolph Buntzel, Germany; Helge Christie, GATT Campaign,
Norway; Mika Iba, TTI, Japan; Mark Ritchie, IATP, USA; Fernanda
Rodriguez Evia, CLAES, Uruguay; Ana Toni, ActionAID, United
Kingdom;  Manus Van Brakel, FOE, Netherlands; Myriam Vander
Stichele, ICDA, Belgium. (Note that commenting does not imply
endorsement of the draft.)

DRAFTING COMMITTEE: Maria Clara Couto Soares, Instituto Brasileiro
de Analises Sociais e Economicos (IBASE), Brazil; Kristin Dawkins,
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), USA; Christine
Harwell, North-South Center, University of Miami, USA; Bertha
Lujan, Red Mexicana Frente al Libre Comercio, Mexico; Flavia
Mello, Instituto Brasileiro de Analises Sociais e Economicos
(IBASE), Brazil; Laurence Tubiana, SOLAGRAL, France; Halina Ward,
Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development
(FIELD), United Kingdom. (Note that participation in the Drafting
Committee does not imply `endorsement of the draft.)
** End of text from cdp:trade.library **