Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America GREEN PAPER 3: Freedoms That Are Abolished

Table of Contents Introduction 1) Trade and Investment: a little history 2) What is in the FTAA Agreement? Biotechnology and the FTAA Protecting Intellectual Property Free Flowing Capital What about Free Flow of People? Militarization and Globalization in the Americas Free Trade and Economic Developmen 3) Making the FTAA a Reality Corporate Globalization in the Americas Dry Canal Megaprojects and the FTAA Dry Canal Megaprojects and the FTAA 4) The FTAA and the Future of the Hemisphere Protecting Corporate Profits FTAA Attacks the Forests 5) Is THIS What Democracy Looks Like? The FTAA's Threat to Democracy North American First Nations: Going Corporate? Free Trade and the Proliferation of Sweatshops 6)THIS is What Democracy Looks Like Free Trade and the Proliferation of Sweatshops 7) What You Can Do Sources Acronym List download this document (488k). ACERCA

FTAA Attacks the Forests by Jason Ford Northern Forest Campaigner, Native Forest Network Eastern North American Resource Center Global Free Logging is back, this time posing as the Advanced Tariff Liberalization initiative (ATL) - one of the planks of the FTAA.1 The ATL was an agenda item for the ill-fated Seattle ministerial of the WTO in November of 1999. The proposed ATL would effectively eliminate most tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers for forest products.2 Tariff elimination on forest products, according to global forestry industry consultant Jaako Poyry, could increase the consumption of forest products by 3 to 4 % worldwide.3 This increase in consumption would undoubtedly be carried out through unsustainable logging practices.4 For example, multi-national timber companies which operate in countries with forests with large tracts of land stand to make enormous profits from tariff elimination through exports to Europe, Japan, and developing countries. In short, the huge profits stemming from the elimination of tariffs would lead to the total destruction of these forests.5 If U.S. tariffs were eliminated from imports of Canadian softwood products, consumption of these wood products in the U.S. would inevitably increase. The result would be dramatic increases in intensive logging in Canadašs virgin Northern Forest.6 Non-tariff "trade barriers," comprise a host of measures designed, in theory, to protect native forests. Examples of these barriers to trade would include forest product labeling, timber and wood products certification programs, and local and national regulations designed to curb the negative impacts of domestic consumption of imported timber products. Another type of non-tariff trade barrier is phytosanitary standards, which are designed to regulate and inspect timber product imports and exports to prevent alien species from invading native forests.7 Eliminating these important regulatory requirements would further degrade the world's remaining native forests, and increase deforestation and the loss of biodiversity in favor of not "restricting" trade.8 NAFTA provides a strong example of how environmentally unsound, pro-"free trade" agreements, like the FTAA, not only lead to severe deforestation in both developing and developed nations, but also contribute to a loss in the global timber labor force. Since NAFTA was enacted in 1994, at least 15 U.S. forest product companies have set up new operations in Mexico.9 Boise Cascade has threatened to move more of its U.S. labor force south into Mexico if logging in U.S. National Forest doesn't increase. 10 s