Global Policy Forum

Bruce Ramsey

The Sierra Club, the Rain Forest Action Network and other environmental groups said yesterday they will campaign against a proposed zero-tariff agreement on forest products in the World Trade Organization.

Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization, San Francisco, said the coalition plans a public campaign between now and the WTO Ministerial meeting set for Nov. 30.-Dec. 3 in Seattle. Activists from as far away as Chile and Japan met over the weekend near Leavenworth, Menotti said, "to help plan our strategies for the next five months."

They'd like to stop any new rules for international trade and want a review of the environmental and social effects of the rules already in place. "We don't want them to take on anything new," said Menotti.

Environmental activists promise to be in Seattle climbing buildings, hanging banners and generally making themselves conspicuous when some 135 foreign trade ministers will be here, talking business.

The agreement the greens oppose, which could be on the table at that meeting, would reduce tariffs on paper and wood products to zero. Opponents say free trade will increase consumption of wood and paper in countries that now have high prices, and thus increase the harvest in the wood-exporting nations such as the United States.

Environmentalists cited a study done by a Finnish consultant Jaakko Poyry for the American Forest & Paper Association. The study estimates that free trade could increase world use of wood and paper by 3 to 4 percent -- a bad thing, they say, if one's priority is preserving forests.

After the United States dropped its surcharge on Canadian lumber in 1995, "we've seen the level of cut go up" in British Columbia, said Seattle activist Patti Goldman of Earth Justice Legal Defense.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office in Washington, D.C., says tariffs hurt efficient producers here. Forest-products tariffs average 1 percent in the United States and Japan, 3 percent in Taiwan, 5 percent in Korea and the European Union, 12 percent in Malaysia and 21 percent in China.

The U.S. forest industry has been arguing for zero tariffs for about 10 years. "We'd like to see an environment where everybody competes on an equal position," said Edward Elias of the American Plywood Association and a member of the U.S. Industry Sector Advisory Committee to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Tariffs are the immediate question, but other issues separate the two sides. The trade representative's office says the current WTO treaty allows each country to have whatever health and environmental rules it wants, as long as some science exists to back them up; rules not backed up, though, can be struck down. Activists yesterday argued that governments should have the ability to impose restrictions based on the precautionary principle -- to prohibit things that might be dangerous. The U.S. Trade Representative argues that once science is abandoned, no one can tell which precautions are reasonable and which are not.

Another issue is product standards. Elias says the European Union has set standards for oriented strand board that most U.S. and Canadian mills can't meet, and that it was "done deliberately to protect their own domestic industry." Environmentalists want local discretion in setting standards, especially in such matters as percentage of recycled content.

Another issue is the proposed agreement on foreign investment, which was suggested first among the rich countries and has now been referred to the entire WTO. Dan Seligman, director of trade policy for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., says the proposed agreement, which was patterned after the North American Free Trade Agreement, would allow investors to sue governments that devalued their property through regulation.

In the Pacific Northwest, he suggested, a foreign investor in forest land might sue the U.S. government for regulations designed to protect salmon habitat.

Such a right "would have a powerful chilling effect" on environmental regulation, he said.

The trade representative has argued that the proposed investment treaty would mainly duplicate rules the United States already has, but that many of our trading partners do not."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.