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Free Trade or Sustainable Trade? An Ecological Economics Perspective

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Title: Free Trade or Sustainable Trade? An Ecological Economics Perspective


1
Free Trade or Sustainable Trade? An Ecological
Economics Perspective
  • Jonathan M Harris

2
What Is Free Trade?
  • Harris In practice, it is simply the
    international application of an unregulated
    free-market system
  • Holy trinity of concepts embodied in traditional
    economic thought
  • Economic growth
  • Technological progress
  • Free Trade

3
Criticisms
  • Unrealistic
  • Constant economic growth is impossible
  • Increase in pollution
  • Limitations
  • Short-term
  • Consumption gains as the sole measure of social
    welfare

4
Short-Term?
  • Gives no consideration to longer-term issues of
    sustainability, growth, and the social and
    institutional impacts of trading patterns

5
Enemy of Sustainability?
  • According to the logic of free trade,
    environmental legislation that restricts or taxes
    the flow of traded commodities can be challenged
    as a barrier of trade

6
GATT Article XX
  • Exceptions to trade rules for measures relating
    to conservation of exhaustible resources
  • UNREALISTIC

7
The Real Problem Sustainability vs. Free Trade
  • Sustainability requires control over the market
  • Free Trade lets the market decide

8
Harriss Circle
  • Sustainability first means free trade second
  • Free trade cannot be the second priority
  • It is unrealistic to keep it as the top priority

9
(No Transcript)
10
What About a Compromise?
11
WTO Committee on Trade and Environment 1996
  • Failure to resolve differences in opinions among
    delegates
  • No proposals for modification of WTO rules
  • VERDICT FAIL

12
Current Ideas
  • Broaden Article XX
  • WTO recognition of multinational environmental
    agreements
  • Trade measures

13
Why Compromise Cant Work
  • Free trade requires constant growth
  • Environmental protection would disrupt this
  • Conclusion Free trade cannot be the basis of
    sustainability

14
The Environmental Kuznets Curve Principle (EKC)
  • Environmental damage increases initially
  • Starts to diminish after the nation hits a
    Turning Point

15
Flaws
  • Tests of this are limited
  • Turning Point is highly variable
  • Turning Point is often higher than suspected

16
Global Turning Points
  • Nitrogen Oxides
  • 2079
  • Sulfur Dioxide
  • 2085
  • Suspended Particulate Matter
  • 2089

17
Further Issues of Free Trade
  • Rising Inequity
  • Undermining Community Organizations

18
Rising Inequity
19
Undermines Unions
20
The NAFTA Agreement (1993)
  • Praised
  • Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)
  • North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation
    (NAALC)

21
The Truth About the CEC
  • Little more than a statement of good intentions

22
NAALCs Turn
  • POWERLESS

23
Free Trade
  • Intellectual Property Rights Bioengineering
  • Developed nations and multinationals
  • Vs
  • Developing nations

24
Conclusions
  • Future of Sustainability
  • Future of NAFTA
  • The Future.

25
Future of Sustainability
  • Strategies included in trade policies and
    agreements
  • Both globally and locally

26
Future of NAFTA
  • Expansion of current policies
  • More effective sanctions

27
The Future
  • Freer Trade ends
  • Trade evaluated socially and ecologically
  • Reflected by global and regional policy
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