“Localists of the world, unite!” That’s the timely call from the International Society for Ecology
and Culture (ISEC) to join the global resistance movement against two planned
trade deals that would undermine decades of achievements.
Hundreds of advisers from the world’s most powerful
corporations are working hard in secret sessions on the details of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP), which is between the European Union and the United States.
The two partnerships are set to overturn national and
regional regulatory barriers to trade, and undermine the work of communities
across the world who have been working for decades to build more just,
sustainable and locally-based alternatives to the global corporate
economy.
Once agreed, the partnerships would pass control over not
just food but health, the environment and the global financial system into the
hands of transnational corporations like Monsanto.
TPP provisions include intellectual property, trade in
services, the environment, labour rights, government procurement and state-owned
enterprises. The vast scope of TTIP includes the reduction of all tariff
barriers, reducing regulation to the barest minimum, protection for
intellectual property and restriction of subsidies to state-owned enterprises.
The TTIP would, for example, override the recent French
state’s ban on fracking and open Europe up to the import of genetically-modified
organisms. The GMOs are high-risk products whose consequences are largely
unknown. As Brian
Emerson of ISEC explains:
“Pro-local initiatives have grown by leaps and bounds,
including farmers’ markets, food cooperatives,’ buy local’ and ‘move your money’
campaigns, small business alliances, and local renewable energy projects.
However, ‘free’ trade treaties are a mortal threat to local economies
worldwide.
“Like trade treaties before them, the TPP and TTIP
facilitate a race to the bottom that favours large, mobile corporations at the
expense of local producers, small businesses, and workers. What’s more, these
treaties subordinate local democracy to corporate interests, and hamstring the
ability of communities to shift direction toward more prosperous local
economies. To continue the inspiring success of their movements, localists need
to join the global resistance against these treaties.”
Some 600 corporate trade advisers to governments of 12
countries - United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia,
Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam - have just completed six days
of talks on the TPP, paving the way for an agreement by the end of 2013.
The second round talks on the TTIP, intended to open up a
Transatlantic Free Trade Area between Europe and the USA, finished two weeks
ago.
ISEC is a
non-profit organisation “dedicated to the revitalisation of cultural and
biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies
worldwide”. Its emphasis is
on education for action: moving beyond single issues to look at the more
fundamental influences that shape our lives.
ISEC’s film The
Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two
opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big
business continues to promote globalisation and the consolidation of corporate
power. On the other are the localisers.
Many, like those in the Transition
initiative, who have been patiently building alternatives to the reckless
exploitation of the planet’s resources, have been avoiding a head-on
confrontation. Whilst ISEC has been promoting localisation as an alternative to
globalisation for three decades, an analysis of the secretive TPP/TTIP deals show
that the real heart of the problem is the capitalist corporatocracy.
ISEC’s call for resistance is important. But we have to go
further. Some are beginning to discuss concrete alternatives. The Moving
Beyond Capitalism conference, in Mexico next year shows that the momentum
for real transformation is gathering pace.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
