- Safe trade
"Safe trade" is a slogan advocated by
Greenpeace in its desire to "green" theWorld Trade Organisation and theDoha Development Round . It is designed to compete with "free trade " as a concept.Safe trade is generally seen as a single framework of rules worldwide to drastically inhibit the flow of alien
organism s (e.g.Genetically modified organism s,imported animals ) across the borders ofecoregion s, to preserve their natural wildbiodiversity . It seeks to preventecological disasters caused by imported organisms or untested genetictechnologies , and to augment and increase localnatural capital by encouraging soil remediation,precision agriculture , andlocal consumption of the nativespecies , rather than imported organisms and heavy use ofpesticide s.Proposal
An important achievement of safe
trade advocacy is theBiosafety Protocol agreed inMontreal in January2000 . Although it relied on the weaker legal principle ofInformed Consent and not the much strongerPrecautionary Principle language sought by advocates, the protocol was considered by most to be a victory that could enhance bothbiosafety andbiosecurity .Other safe trade reforms seek to advance
sustainability by reducing reliance onenergy subsidies and oil-basedtransport , and (indirectly) improves equity ineconomic affairs - that is, it promotes a saferpolitical economy which is more respectful oflife in general.Safe trade is a major goal of systems of
Bioregional democracy and is often advocated alongside it, e.g. by Greens. Both are also implicitly related toCommunity-Based Economics , as local trade in local goods with no reliance on alien organisms presents no ecological risk to itsgenome s,soil , ordrainage basin s. Accordingly, some advocates argue, local trade in any native species within an ecoregion's borders should not be taxed at all, as it presents little or no ecological risk compared to imported goods, and so requires little or noregulation , labelling,inspection , or other expenses.The assumption that imports carry
moral hazard s, and thattax, trade, tariff measures should compensate for harms done, is shared by advocates offair trade whose programs address, in addition, more overtsocial justice concerns ofhuman beings, such as the maintenance of the "human capital " of a region. Both initiatives are alternatives tofree trade , which has no such controls, and generally permits and encourages free transit in goods (but not, in general, labour) across ecological and social borders.A broader understanding of
biosecurity that is emerging under threat ofbiological warfare , and the fear that such economically devastating events as themad cow disease epidemic could recur, either deliberately (as an act ofbioterrorism ) or by accident due to unrestricted imports, is causing some nations, notablyNew Zealand , to adopt relatively harsh restrictions against imported organisms. As one objective ofasymmetric warfare is to cause attacks to appear initially as accidents, or blame slow responses on apparently-incompetent governments, there is some concern that spreading a virulent organism among animals would be an effective way to attack humans, damage economies, and discredit governments who are lax onbiosecurity . Technologies for scanning for dangerous organisms at ports and markets are also becoming more reliable and less expensive. However, nobio-defense solution seems to be able to compete with a simple reduction of import volumes, and its corresponding reduction in risk of any accidents.Reception
Opposition
Critics of safe trade argue that the
military andagriculture aspects ofbiosecurity are dissimilar, unlikely to converge in the form of an attack disguised as an accident, and require such differentialprevention and response measures that there is little risk reduced in altering thefundamental structure of trade relationships to accommodate a robust regime ofbiosecurity . Such critics usually argue instead that emergency services'biodefense measures are sufficient to handle outbreaks of any diseases or alien organisms, and that such outbreaks are unlikely to be long sustained or deliberately masked as agricultural accidents. This, to the advocates, seems like wishful thinking.upport
Advocates point to the costs of emergency measures such as burning over one million cows suspected of having
foot-and-mouth disease in the UK, smoke from which they calculated (based ondioxin levels) was to be expected to kill several hundred Britons from cancers in this generation. Safe trade, they argue, would have removed the need for any such measures, asvaccination of British beef cattle would have been possible (the burning was to prevent British exports of beef from being rejected by its trade partners, who would not have been able to tell vaccinated from infected beef), and the foot-and-mouth disease was not so dangerous to humans that it could have justified dooming so many fellow citizens to die of the dioxin-caused cancers. The burning, they argue, was justified only by bad trade rules that spread infection and advise dangerous cures that are worse than the ailment itself.Another argument supporting safe trade rules is that there are links between
primate extinction anddeforestation in the regions where primates are abundant, i.e. theAmazon rainforest ,African rainforest , andSumatran rainforest . Fail to prevent devastating logging in these regions, advocates claim, and aGreat Ape species will likely become extinct, causing a critical link to the human past to be permanently lost. Accordingly, preventing logs from these forests from reaching foreign markets has been a major focus ofGreenpeace actions, especially in 2002.ee also
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fair trade
*biosafety
*biosecurity
*biodiversity External links
* [http://www.greenpeace.org/politics/wto/ciel.pdf "Safe Trade in the 21st Century", Greenpeace, Center for Environmental Law]
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