Peru Free Trade Agreement, Another Disaster in the Making

[Joanne98]

http://xicanopwr.com/2007/11/peru-free-trade-agreement-another-disaster-in-the-making/

Peru Free Trade Agreement, Another Disaster in the Making
November 6, 2007 by XicanoPwr

Congress is expected to vote on the Peru Free Trade Agreement, also known as the Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement (PTPA) on Wednesday. The Peru FTA moved rapidly through Congress with the support of the Democratic Party leadership. Like the broken promise to end the war during last years congressional elections, key Democrats including Representatives Pelosi, Rangel and Levin have yet again betrayed the will of the electorate.

Anxious to appease corporate funders, they are siding with the Bush Administration to push this agreement, which will further devastate workers and poor farmers in both countries. During his final month in office, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo introduced a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, despite widespread reluctance among many Peruvian political figures. Toledo proved to be yet another Latin American president who yielded to Washington’s wishes instead of paying attention to the desires of his fellow citizens.

Peru’s current President Alan Garcia and Peruvian business groups say claim that the FTA will lead to increased prosperity in Peru, where over fifty percent of the population lives below the poverty line. However, 350,000 indigenous people from 1,350 communities spanning 16 different linguistic groups and six regional organizations in Peru say different.

“We are convinced that the FTA will give incentives for further and irreversible destruction of virgin rainforest, which will in turn increase global warming and displace our communities from their home territories. This is an absolutely unacceptable outcome for our planet, and particularly for the territory where our communities live, as we collectively work to reduce the threat of global warming.

“…the Peru FTA, if approved, would threaten every aspect of our livelihoods and sustainable development program. We are very preoccupied that the administration of President Alan García is auctioning off Peru’s Amazon at a breakneck speed to foreign firms ranging from Hunt Oil to Occidental Petroleum and beyond. Already by 2004, as the FTA was just being negotiated, only 15 percent of Peru’s Amazon was zoned for oil, gas and mining – today, that figure is near 70 percent.

Like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Peruvian FTA will eliminate tariffs and other barriers to goods and services. And like the devastating impact of NAFTA within the agricultural sector of Mexico; the trade agreement would severely impact the Quechua and Aymara subsistence farmers in the rural highlands.

The Peruvian FTA is more than “just about trade,” the trade agreement will dismantle significant services and investment barriers, which, are at odds with public health, safety, and the environment. An issue that has received less attention is the implications of Big Oil on Peru. Big Oil companies has actively been lobbying Congress for more access to the endangered Amazon rainforest.

The Peru deal includes new rights for Big Oil that extend even beyond NAFTA’s awful provisions. The proposed pact would empower multinational oil and gas to drag Peru’s government to World Bank tribunals to demand compensation for changes to the corporations’ exploration and exploitation contracts that could undermine their “expected future profits.”

The bilateral agreement will institutionalize an uneven playing field between the two countries instead of establishing fair and equitable rules for trade that could promote development and reduce poverty. The Peru FTA agreement includes strict new intellectual property rules that the latest threat to traditional knowledge.

Traditional knowledge is a concept that encompasses tangible and intangible creations, cultural manifestations, technologies, sciences, agricultural knowledge, designs, literatures, and, visual and performance arts derived from oral and written traditions. Traditional knowledge is also connected to indigenous traditional territories, lands, natural and genetic resources and, is transmitted from generation to generation. The free trade agreement would allow the US and the private sector to exploit their lands and resources.

The USA and EU are pushing through rules on intellectual property that reduce poor people’s access to life-saving medicines, increase the prices of seeds and other farming inputs beyond the reach of small farmers, and make it harder for developing-country firms to access new technology. The issue of traditional knowledge has come up in the final draft of the agreement which makes provisions on traditional knowledge and biodiversity.

Recognizing the Importance of Biodiversity

The Parties also reached an understanding that recognizes the importance of traditional knowledge and biodiversity and their potential contribution to cultural, economic and social development.

The Parties recognize the importance of the following:

(1) obtaining informed consent from the appropriate authority prior to accessing genetic resources under the control of such authority;

(2) equitably sharing the benefits arising from the use of traditional knowledge and genetic resources; and

(3) promoting quality patent examination to ensure the conditions of patentability are satisfied.

The Parties recognize that access to genetic resources or traditional knowledge, as well as the equitable sharing of benefits that may result from use of those resources or that knowledge, can be adequately addressed through contracts that reflect mutually agreed terms between users and providers.

Each Party shall endeavour to seek ways to share information that may have a bearing on the patentability of inventions based on traditional knowledge or genetic resources by providing:

a) publicly accessible databases that contain relevant information; and

b) an opportunity to cite, in writing, to the appropriate examining authority prior art that may have a bearing on patentability.

The Peru FTA is expected to leave 700,000 to 900,000 Peruvians without access to medicines unless public health-care spending and individual incomes increase. Under the Peru FTA, Peru will no longer be able to reject a patent application because a firm fails to indicate the origin of a plant or show proof of consent for its use from a local community. As a result, communities will be forced to pay for patented plant varieties based on genetic resources from their own soil.

Because of the damage NAFTA has done to the agricultural sector, over 850,000 jobs have been lost in the Mexican manufacturing industry, real wages have fallen by 20 percent. As a result, many have fled Mexico to the US, where, through myth or reality, they have come to believe their is ample opportunities to improve their lives. Like it’s predecessor, the US can expect an annual increase of immigration from Peru as millions of peasant farmers lose their livelihoods to imports of subsidized US commodities.

The Peru FTA will put US environmental, food safety and other public interest protections in jeopardy of direct challenge by foreign investors in secret international tribunals. The Bush-negotiated FTAs would extend the NAFTA foreign investor rules which would ban many anti-offshoring and “Buy Local” government procurement policies.

The Peru Trade Agreement should be rejected until its provisions are so revised as to strengthen, not worsen the economic, social and political equality of Peru. Social justice demands such a rejection. We must send them a clear message that their future in Congress depends on pleasing us.

Please use the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch’s form to send a letter to your Representative to oppose the Peru NAFTA expansion.
http://xicanopwr.com/2007/11/peru-free-trade-agreement-another-disaster-in-the-making/