Bringing together social and environmental demands in the fight against FTAs
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In 2024, bilaterals.org celebrates its 20th anniversary. During this time, bilaterals.org has served as a collaborative and open online platform supporting struggles against free trade and investment agreements around the world, and campaigns against RCEP, TPP, the ISDS mechanism and many other processes.
To mark the occasion, we are publishing a series of five articles written by the movements and activists who have been at the heart of these campaigns all along. The articles aim to take stock of what has happened over the past 20 years and to look ahead to the resistance against free trade agreements in the years to come. They share experiences from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, connecting the dots between different struggles.
- Bringing together social and environmental demands in the fight against FTAs
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Bringing together social and environmental demands in the fight against FTAs
By Lucía Sepúlveda Ruiz, spokesperson for Chile Mejor sin TLC, 30 September 2024
In the struggle against free trade agreements (FTAs), we have learned that they take the form of ’constitutions’ drawn up virtually in secret by transnational corporations in mining, agribusiness, energy, pharmaceuticals, finance and services. The states of the global South ratify them, thereby guaranteeing their investments and providing them with the tools they need to accumulate capital. What’s more, if a state dares to adopt a public policy that is considered ’expropriatory’ in one way or another for the interests of the transnationals, it is taken to international tribunals where it has to pay heavy fines. In other cases, they are ’dissuaded’ from doing so in order to avoid being fined millions of dollars. The nasty dictatorships of Latin America or the colonial empires of the 19th century have given way to this system, which has basically the same objectives: to maintain the privileges of the elites of the global North, often allied with the elites of Latin American countries.
In Chile in 2021, we found that this system was firmly entrenched in the political establishment. As Chile Mejor sin TLC, we presented a constitutional proposal to replace this treaty system with one that guarantees sovereignty. We proposed withdrawing from the system of international tribunals and preserving the right of peoples to develop public policies adapted to their realities and needs. We received public support and our proposal, which was very well founded and documented, was voted through. However, the political machinery of the then Constituent Convention immediately rejected it. This is how we discovered the power of the alliance between transnational corporations and the ruling elites, regardless of their sometimes ’progressive’ political labels. It was only during a period of strong mobilisation and citizen awareness that it was possible to successfully challenge the adoption of new free trade agreements. Today, we are faced with governments that are impervious to criticism and opposed to popular participation. In practice, the government of President Gabriel Boric has established a legislative co-government with the business lobby.
We believe that in order to discredit the model of free trade agreements, it is imperative to show their link with the dominant economic model, which is characterised by corruption, the loss of fundamental rights and quality of life, and the inexorable advance of environmental degradation. The above-mentioned companies are leading the way, for example, in the avocado, lithium, cellulose and now green hydrogen industries, leaving behind sacrificed areas, destroyed territories, families and indigenous peoples without rights, condemned to displacement and the end of their way of life and livelihood. It is also necessary to denounce the false solutions to climate change promoted by governments, disguised as "green" energy megaprojects or new transgenic monocultures and other predatory initiatives on which the population is not even consulted.
A study of these agreements over the decades has shown that their content is almost identical, although their impact varies according to the characteristics and economic structure of each country. In Chile, Peru and Colombia, for example, extractivism is predominant in mining, forestry and the salmon industry. In other countries closer to the United States, such as Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic, it takes the form of an export assembly system (’maquila’) that directly provides cheap labour for the manufacture of foreign branded products.
No development, no benefits
The consequences for our peoples are the same, as various analyses have shown in recent years: after twenty years or more of free trade agreements, the promised ’development’ has not materialised, and our countries continue to be mainly exporters of natural resources with no added value. In the case of Chile, deindustrialisation has been total and there is virtually no national industry left. A recent study by the Fundación Sol also found that the only winners from these decades of international economic architecture have been big business, as wages have not risen.
One of the aspects in which the deterioration caused by the installation of the functional agro-export model in the FTAs has been most notorious is the situation of peasant family agriculture in Latin America, and consequently of food, whose deterioration runs counter to the rise of agro-industry and the water crisis. Free trade agreements are a major obstacle to tackling the ecological crisis in our countries. The model of large-scale plantations, with intensive use of toxic inputs that pollute the soil, water and human health, continues to advance. During these decades of struggle against free trade agreements, the struggle to recover traditional seeds as part of the construction of food sovereignty has gained momentum. Women, as guardians of seeds, forests and water, have been at the forefront of these struggles, as they also suffer the consequences of this predatory model in their own territories. It has been essential to learn from the experiences of other peoples, such as those in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador, who share these problems. In this respect, bilaterals.org has made an important contribution, as have other TNI and GRAIN networks and publications, and our peers in América Latina Mejor sin TLC.
The provisions of these agreements and the investments made by their promoters make it possible to create transnational production chains, but corporations are also extending their activities into basic service sectors such as water and energy. In Chile, French and Canadian investors own some public water distribution services. ENEL, an energy distribution company that has been heavily criticised for the poor quality of its services, is Italian. Chile announced this year that it would revoke ENEL’s concession following the company’s latest major disaster, which left millions without electricity for several weeks. But there is no precedent for such a move. In 2019, a procedure was announced to revoke the concession of sanitation company Essal (owned by France’s Suez) following an oil spill at its drinking water plant in a town in the south of the country. However, in 2020 the company threatened to sue the state. As a result, Chile dropped the case, as many countries do when faced with the risk of having to pay colossal sums in such claims. This year, a dispute was brought before ICSID by the American group Ohio National, an insurer, challenging a law enacted during the pandemic that allowed for the withdrawal of 20% of the pensions of those who requested it. However, the Chilean Congress voted in favour of a new treaty with the European Union that continues to allow international claims on the same grounds.
In order to put an end to free trade agreements, it is essential to continue to link the different struggles for the defence of territories and their natural resources, for the social demands of the people, for life and for peace.
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