Opinion: How TPP undermines climate change goals for agriculture

If countries are going to reach their climate goals, we’re going to have to stop bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partenrship from going forward.

|
Carlos Barria/Reuters/File
Delegates protesting against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement hold up signs during the first session at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Two big international agreements have been in the news lately. Last week, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed onto the Paris Agreement on climate. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving a dozen countries and covering 40 percent of the global economy, has become a hot button issue in the Presidential election. Unfortunately, like stubborn school children the two agreements aren’t talking to each other—and our planet and food systems could pay the price, according to the new report The Climate Cost of Free Trade: How the TPP and other trade deals undermine the Paris climate agreement by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

National commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, covering sectors like energy, agriculture, and forestry, are at the heart of the Paris climate agreement. Nearly 80 percent of countries’ national climate plans (known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs) include actions on agriculture. Countries are grappling with the best strategies to both reduce agricultural emissions and adapt their food production to climate change. Yet, the policy straightjackets of current trade regimes are major obstacles.

The global food system, including agricultural production and associated land use, is responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gases. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identifies the top sources of agricultural emissions as coming from methane produced by livestock (39 percent of the sector’s GHG emissions, with much of this from large-scale, confined operations) and nitrous oxide from synthetic fertilizers used to grow commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans. While agriculture’s direct emissions are considerable, the FAO estimates that an additional 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are emitted annually due to deforestation associated with expanded agricultural production.

Most of agriculture’s global emissions mirror the growth of an industrial model of agriculture designed to compete in global markets and take advantage of trade rules put in place over the last several decades. Trade deals, including the TPP, accelerate the expansion of this industrial model.

For example, trade rules at the World Trade Organization, and regional deals like the TPP, seek to harmonize food safety rules between countries, including rules governing pesticide and veterinary drug residues on food. Trade rules put extensive administrative burdens on food safety policies, demanding they be “least trade restrictive,” rather than prioritizing public health and the environmental sustainability of agricultural production as criteria. 

The application of intellectual property rights to seeds is another aspect of trade rules.Maintaining genetic diversity in crop and animal production is a critical tool for adapting to climate change. But the TPP requires all participating countries to sign on to a global seed breeders’ rights treaty (known as UPOV91), which prohibits farmers and breeders from exchanging protected seeds, while empowering global seed companies like Monsanto and Syngenta.

Last year, MIT researchers found that strengthening food production at the national level (sourcing less from international markets) will be essential for addressing food security concerns associated with climate change. But agricultural trade rules limit a country’s ability to build strong national and local food systems. The TPP goes beyond the World Trade Organization (WTO) to place limits on tariffs importing countries use to slow an influx of cheap imports that undercut their domestic production.

Climate change is expected to disrupt agricultural production, therefore increasing food price volatility in years to come. Among developing countries, food reserve strategies are regaining traction. A centuries-old strategy of putting food (usually storable grains and beans) aside in times of plenty for times of scarcity, food reserves are seen as particularly critical for vulnerable, food import-dependent countries. Yet WTO rules have routinely conflicted with various approaches to food reserves; the most recent skirmish is over India’s National Food Security Policy Act.

Land use and domestic ownership of land are also heavily influenced by trade and investment rules.  Investor state provisions in agreements like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and TPP grant foreign investors special legal rights. According toresearchers from Tufts University, free trade deals limit the ability of governments to address land grabbing and to implement the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Land Tenure (on appropriate land investment) established by the FAO. Many recent land grabs have been driven by a rush to control scarce resources in the wake of the 2007-2008 food price crisis and in the face of expected global supply chain disruptions caused by climate change.

If countries are going to reach their climate goals as part of the Paris Agreement, we’re going to have to stop bad trade deals like the TPP from going forward. Trade concerns can no longer override our ability to address climate change, food security and the transition we need to make toward agroecological practices that both build climate resilience and reduce emissions.

Read the full IATP report, here

This article first appeared in Food Tank

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Opinion: How TPP undermines climate change goals for agriculture
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2016/0909/Opinion-How-TPP-undermines-climate-change-goals-for-agriculture
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe