Web of Life

Over the past three weeks we believe we have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that, for all its expressed concerns at the rapid depletion of the world’s forest cover and the inevitable consequence of severe environmental degradation, America’s Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) has little to do with forests or with conservation, but has everything to do with the politics of globalisation.

Those who doubt the correctness of that appraisal need only to be told that none of the mandatory requirements to be complied with by a country for eligibility are even mentioned in passing in either of the two model TFCA Agreements, copies of which were circulated recently to the members of the TFCA Committee set up by our Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources.

It is likely there will be those who take that non-citation as proof that the Unites States, prompted by an outpouring of "love and affection" (as all deeds of gift routinely have it), has chosen to disregard the mandatory requirements of the TFCA Act to enable Sri Lanka to qualify. Such people are also likely to be given to fondly hoping that the sun will one day rise in the west instead of set in it.

The truth is there’s no mention of the mandatory requirements in those two Agreements because Sri Lanka is already in the process of negotiating a bilateral treaty (either ‘Investment’ or ‘Free Trade’) outside of the TFCA and hopes its conclusion will lighten our unbearable debt burden by the equivalent of a feather’s weight.

If memory serves, a minister of the UPFA recently returned from a visit to the US and announced that Sri Lanka would shortly sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US; it was mentioned in passing that Sri Lanka needed to safeguard its export-oriented garment industry from being overwhelmed and put out of business by much cheaper Chinese apparel exports when the US abolishes the country-quotas on textile imports next year. Yes, that’s the ‘bilateral investment treaty with the US’ referred to in the TFCA Act.

But there’s no such thing as a bilateral treaty to protect only garment exports, without our offering something in return. Bilateral means bilateral, and it has to be a reciprocal, two-way arrangement. There has to be a quid pro quo. In any case, bilateral treaties are not – indeed, were not - meant to be confined to a single product or item or even to one specified area of economic activity. They have been crafted with fiendish intent to be comprehensive and all-encompassing.

In short, every sector of the Sri Lankan economy would be opened to foreign investment, including social welfare areas such as health and education, or subjects fundamental to national sovereignty or security, such as communications, electricity, water, minerals, military supplies, ports and prisons. If, in return, Sri Lanka expresses a desire to have insurance cover by way of the treaty only for its garment industry, that would suit the US just fine. Not something-for-something, but a bonanza of something-for-everything. From Uncle Sam’s perspective, that is.

To a cash-strapped country like ours, the prospect of a debt reduction of about 10 million dollars (never mind that it’s out of a total of about one billion dollars) is the carrot that’s being dangled via the TFCA offer, to nudge Sri Lanka into signing on the dotted line overlooking the already well-known dangers lurking in bilateral treaties. The bitter experiences of other countries already cited in previous weeks clearly establish the vicious nature of both ‘free trade’ and ‘investment’ treaties with the US and other industrialized nations now operating under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

So let’s for the moment forget about the red-herring that’s the TFCA and look more closely at the far greater threat posed to this nation by a serial killer-shark of a bilateral treaty with the US. True, the TFCA largesse of a 10-million-dollar debt reduction will become a reality once the mandatory treaty requirement is met. But that 10 million dollars, converted into Sri Lanka Rupees at whatever current rate of exchange prevailing at the time, has yet to be paid into a separate Fund, and the Government will have no say or control over disbursements, so no chance of slipping the hand into the kitty on the sly. But from where, in any case, does clean-suit-and-empty-pocket Sri Lanka find that type of money in dollars, rupees or whatever? According to informed sources (as the saying goes) the State banks are already on life-support, so the President’s Fund is all there is, I guess. A less worthy cause is hard to imagine.

The international investment regime of FTAs and BITs proposed by the US and the European Union (EU), once accepted, ensures that national governments can no longer follow their own development policies. They cannot exclude foreign firms from participating in strategic sectors of the economy (such as oil and gas), and cannot also insist that foreign firms form joint ventures with local companies (the current policy in China). National governments would be forced to privatise central and local government services, utilities, health services and education, and open these areas to 100% foreign ownership – an invitation the multinationals will accept with alacrity.

GRAIN, an international non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity worldwide, recently released an exhaustive website "briefing" titled The Myths and Consequences of free trade agreements with the US. Some eye-openers culled from it follow:

The first myth is that we are dealing with agreements that have to do exclusively with economic matters. In practice, the agreements are – explicitly and implicitly – political agreements. Without trying to hide this, the US has stated officially that the agreements with the Andean Community nations are a "natural extension" of Plan Colombia – the initiative of the US to send troops to Colombia and to support military action against the Colombian people with the excuse of controlling drug trafficking. In the case of Morocco, the US presents the agreement as a means of supporting its desire to "promote more tolerant, open and prosperous Islamic societies", which means imposing the standards of the US government on the Arab world. The political objective is not hidden in the case of Thailand either, where the US presents the agreement as a means for reinforcing military ties and co-operation in the war against terrorism.

The second myth about all of these processes – and the one most widely accepted – is that within the economic context we are truly dealing with ‘free trade’ agreements. The ‘free trade’ aspect – meaning the creation of conditions that allow the free international flow of merchandise and goods – is clearly marginal. The WTO already did that job, and did it very well. Less than a third of WTO members keep tariffs for agricultural products above 20%, and a quarter of them charge duties below 10%. So what are the agreements looking for? Even lower tariffs, especially for agricultural products, which would be the death-knell for small- and medium-sized farming in developing countries. The US is disposed to making certain concessions regarding tariffs for agricultural products in exchange for political subordination together with privileges and guarantees for US investors.

A third myth is that by obtaining concessions for agriculture, the effects of the agreements will be tolerable for farmers and native peoples. Nothing could be further from the truth. The agreements, with or without concessions for agriculture, will make possible the expropriation of farmers’ and native people’s lands, and will make impossible agrarian reform, the special recognition of rights or the status of native peoples or other social sectors such as farmers and ethnic minorities.

The fourth myth is the suggestion that these agreements have anything to do with negotiation. The agreements that have already been signed show that this is an exercise in promoting packaged products that are almost identical to the letter, and are merely reorganised to better clarify the protection of major investors’ interests. The texts are simply improved versions of the original documents presented by the US in the deliberations about the WTO, the FTAA and the notorious Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).

While it may be painful to admit, the fifth myth is that the social protests held at Cancun and Miami stopped the progress of neo-liberalism. These demonstrations were important and caused an undeniable impact. But that has not stopped them. While the FTAA may become irrelevant, the WTO and other negotiations continue to unfold aggressively, and bilateral agreements are providing the US with precisely what they want. What we see is a shift in the methods of attaining their goal, and the strengthening of secrecy around negotiations in order to impede social pressure. The image taking shape is of a neo-liberal framework with fewer loose ends.