PANNA: The WTO and Pesticide Reform

Last year's protests of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meetings in Seattle highlighted the extraordinarily wide range of environmental and social impacts of global trade.(1) Not surprisingly, the WTO has far-reaching impacts on pesticide use, of which pesticide reform, farmworker rights, food safety, sustainable agriculture and other activists should be aware. This article examines these impacts.

WTO rules undermine national policy-making to reduce pesticide use

The most direct impact of the WTO trade regime on pesticide use is that its various agreements provide avenues by which national, state and local environmental and public health policies can be challenged by member nations. In some cases this means that such protective policies may be overturned; in other cases, it means that protective policies may simply never be enacted for fear of challenge.(2)

One basis on which environmental and social protections can be challenged is that WTO rules restrict policies based on how products are produced. These rules make it extremely difficult to create WTO-legal policies that favor products produced in a way that is conducive to environmental, worker, consumer or human rights protections.(3) For example, WTO rules generally prohibit: policies that favor importation of agricultural products produced without use of certain chemicals; eco-labeling and other Right-to-Know policies(4); and principle-based government purchasing. Policies that make such distinctions face the prospect of challenge by member nations representing companies who seek market access without restrictions on, or identification of, how they produce their products.

Another ground for challenge is that WTO rules require environmental policy to be the "least trade-restrictive" policy option. In other words, policies intended to protect the environment must demonstrate that there are no alternatives that are more favorable to unrestricted trade.(5) While in principle a policy could be deemed least trade-restrictive, all challenged policies are subject to the interpretations of WTO dispute panels. To date, these panels have never ruled an environmental measure to be the least trade-restrictive policy option.(6) The agreement requiring least trade-restriction also opens national law-making to formal input by opposing WTO member nations.(7) It thus involves significant administrative costs to nations pursuing protective legislation and raises important issues of national sovereignty.

Challenge to a protective policy is also possible because WTO rules set weak international safety and environmental standards. WTO agreements require nations to base their standards on existing international standards and meet onerous justifications if it exceeds them.(8) In other words, the idea is not to bring member nations into compliance with safety standards, but rather to open nations to challenge if they surpass them. Moreover, because international agreement on standards is difficult to achieve, such standards tend toward a lowest common-denominator effect, or "downward harmonization."

The WTO empowers the Codex Alimentarius, a food industry-dominated body, to set food safety standards. Codex has a decidedly non-precautionary approach to regulation, in which practices and chemicals are effectively presumed safe until proven otherwise. Scientists from the U.S. Environmental Working Group found that of 3,285 pesticide/crop combinations for which Codex has standards, 1,539 are illegal in the United States.(9) For example, Codex allows residues of DDT on grain, meat and dairy.(10) Codex compliance issues have stalled the implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban on the probable carcinogenic fungicide folpet(11) and have led to the amendment of federal food-safety regulatory acts.(12) The EPA has also delayed action on another probable carcinogenic pesticide, procymidone, residues of which were found in wine imported from Europe.(13)

In addition to these avenues of challenge, it's worth noting that WTO agreements limit governments' ability to regulate foreign investment.(14) For example, conditioning investment in ways that are favorable to environmental, labor, cultural and other policy goals is now more difficult. Moreover, expansion of these provisions is on the horizon. Of particular concern are efforts to bring to the WTO investor rights that are similar to those extended by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This raises the prospect of granting companies the right to sue governments over policy that impacts their profitability. For example, under NAFTA, the Canadian corporation Methanex is essentially suing the U.S. for economic losses associated with a California ban on the toxic gasoline additive MTBE.(15) It is not hard to imagine the extraordinary impact on pesticide policy if nations worldwide are prohibited from establishing the conditions of foreign investment and NAFTA-style investor rights are extended globally.

WTO rules undermine international agreements that reduce pesticide use

A less direct but potentially far-reaching impact of the WTO on pesticide use has to do with multilateral (i.e., many-nation) environmental agreements (MEAs). MEAs often contain provisions that arguably contradict WTO rules. Which are supreme? What happens, for example, if there is a WTO challenge of a nation's compliance with the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which phases out use of the extremely hazardous pesticide methyl bromide? Unfortunately, unlike WTO agreements, MEAs are essentially voluntary, with few or no enforcement provisions. This suggests, in effect, that they take a back seat to WTO dictates, even if they contain explicit supremacy language. Furthermore, this potential conflict of jurisdiction has caused some parties to demand language asserting the supremacy of WTO rules. For example, negotiations are underway to create an international treaty to phase out the use of 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs), perhaps the world's most toxic substances, nine of which are pesticides (see News Note: POPs Negotiations Slow in Bonn). Some parties are demanding a clause asserting the supremacy of obligations under international agreements such as the WTO.(16)

WTO rules foster an industrial agricultural model that is at the heart of pesticide use

Another important WTO impact on pesticide use is its fostering of the industrial agricultural system, a system resulting in the sale of more than US$30 billion of pesticides a year.(17)

Industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on chemical pesticides. Industrial farming tends toward large-scale, capital-intensive farms specializing in single crops. Such monocultures, with no or minimal crop rotations, preclude beneficial crop interactions, lead to the loss of soil organisms and beneficial insects, and disrupt other complimentary relationships on the farm, such as the production of manure by livestock. These factors create crop vulnerability to insects, weeds and disease and thus require high levels of pesticide use. Worse, such pesticide use causes accelerated development of pest resistance, necessitating use of more or stronger pesticides.(18)

The industrial agricultural system also leaves farmers few alternatives to such pesticide-intensive farming. Concentration in the food industry leaves growers with distorted markets for their products and generally results in low prices. Concentration in the agricultural inputs industry exposes growers to high priced input costs. This low-prices, high-costs squeeze pressures farmers to get bigger and to adopt whatever techniques and tools that promise to raise yields. The inputs industry, of course, offers and promotes those inputs that best serve their profitability. This locks growers into the modern, pesticide-intensive model.(19)

Unfortunately, WTO agreements promote industrial agriculture globally, in several ways. First, measures that eliminate trade restrictions in agriculture are devastating to small-scale producers -- those potentially with the least pesticide dependence. WTO agreements that reduce or eliminate tariffs, import controls, price supports and family farm support programs result in opening markets to cheap exports with which small farmers cannot compete.(20) In other words, liberalizing trade intensifies the price squeeze by making farmers face global prices, but local costs. At the same time, trade rules do not prevent subsidies of exports and foreign investment, practices which greatly foster larger-scale, highly pesticide-dependent agriculture.(21) More than ever, small and family farmers must "get big or get out."

The WTO also furthers industrial agriculture by requiring that all member nations essentially adopt a U.S.-style system of copyrights, trademarks, and patents - including patents on certain forms of life.(22) Such a global system of intellectual property rights increases big agribusiness' ability to control the range and prices of agricultural inputs and technologies. These new intellectual property rights may have previously inconceivable impacts on pesticide use. For example, the patenting of products based on traditional natural pesticides, such as those based on the neem tree,(23) raises the specter of commercial barriers to adoption of sustainable pest-management products.

The global system of patent rights also fuels the development of genetically engineered (GE) crops. Virtually all of these crops, commercialized thanks to modern patents, are genetically engineered to withstand proprietary pesticides (e.g., Roundup Ready crops) or to be pesticides themselves (e.g., Bt crops). Both of these practices raise the critical issues of accelerated development of pest resistance and enhanced pesticide use. GE crops are also a threat to the already rapidly shrinking biodiversity essential for sustainable, non-pesticide-based agriculture. This is because of widespread adoption of a small number of aggressively marketed GE varieties, licensing agreements that outlaw use and breeding of GE crops' second generation seeds, and likely-to-be-commercialized use-restriction technologies such as "Terminator" varieties (that produce sterile seeds, see page 15) all serve to accelerate genetic homogeneity.(24)

The WTO in context

In sum, the WTO impacts pesticide use by dangerously undermining pesticide regulation and by fostering industrial, pesticide-centered agriculture. Pesticide impacts, however, are only one aspect of the environmental and social harm it causes. Through similar mechanisms, the WTO is implicated in a wide range of negative impacts involving species protection, habitat destruction, labor rights, human rights, the condition of women, national sovereignty, local and democratic decision-making, hunger, poverty, inequality, among other vital issues.

Likewise, the WTO itself is just one aspect of an international economic order that routinely deprecates nature and people. It stands in concert with other trade agreements (such as NAFTA and other lesser known agreements), international lending institutions (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), and bilateral development and investor programs (such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and Overseas Private Investment Corporation). World Bank programs, for example, typically require recipient nations to adopt "structural adjustment" plans -- i.e., policies characterized by near total reliance on the "free market." This entails severely reducing government regulation of trade, investment, labor, health and safety, and the environment.(25) (PAN North America, in fact, monitors the promotion of toxic pesticides in World Bank programs.(26))

What all of these institutions and programs have in common is that they reflect large corporate interests. This is hardly surprising given the widespread notion that the unfettered pursuit of profitability is the best scheme for economic, social and natural prosperity. Of course, the economic, social and natural worlds, empirically, beg to differ.

Focusing on the institutionalization of corporate rights and their far-reaching impacts may bring us to uncomfortable or daunting territory, but the lessons of the WTO for activists are clear. Looking at corporate rights helps us identify the structural underpinnings of pesticide use. Looking at their far-reaching impacts helps us to see how our issues are naturally a part of a much broader movement for environmental protection and social justice. This is a good thing, for we need a big movement -- a movement much like the one that took to the streets in Seattle.

Skip Spitzer is Internet Developer at PANNA, and also works on PANNA's campaign on genetic engineering.

Notes

1 The WTO negotiates, interprets and enforces global agreements dealing with trade and investment. At the 1999 WTO ministerial meeting, tens of thousands of environmentalists, unionists, and other activists staged aggressive protests, helping to derail negotiations. For a general overview of the WTO, see D. Barker and J. Mander, Invisible Government (International Forum on Globalization, 1999), p.24.

2 Compliance is a major aspect of the WTO. Member nations deemed to be in violation of its rules must eliminate the offending policy or face perpetual fines or retaliatory sanctions.

3 The backbone of rules against distinguishing between products based on conditions of their production is found in three articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now part of the WTO. Most Favored Nation Treatment says essentially that any favorable treatment given to products of one country must be extended to all member countries. National Treatment asserts that foreign goods "shall be accorded treatment no less favorable" than domestic products. Elimination of Quantitative Restrictions says that governments cannot limit exports or imports.

4 Interestingly, this includes policies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's national organic standards now under development.

5 The principal WTO agreement in this regard is the Technical Barriers to Trade agreement.

6 For more on composition of trade dispute panels, see S. Shrybman, An Environment Guide to the World Trade Organization (Sierra Club Canada, May 1997).

7 For example, Shrybman reports that nations are required to "notify other WTO members of its initiative; provide copies and supporting documentation when requested; provide an opportunity for comment; and demonstrate how those comments have been taken into account." See Shrybman.

8 The principal governing agreement here is the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.

9 Lori M.Wallach, "International ‘Harmonization' of Social, Economic and Environmental Standards" (Public Citizen, 1999).

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Patti Goldman and Martin Wagner, Trading Away Public Health (Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, November 1999), pp.8-9.

14 The primary agreements in this regard are the Trade Related Investment Measures.

15 Goldman, op. cit., pp.17-18.

16 Jim Puckett, When Trade is Toxic (Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange and Basel Action Network), p.17.

17 Agrow: World Crop Protection News, July 11, 1999.

18 For a more in-depth agroecological assessment of industrial agriculture, see Miguel A. Altieri, Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture (Westview Press, Boulder, 1995).

19 Loss of small farms has been one key result of this model. There were almost seven million farms in the U.S. in the 1930s, but only about 1.8 million in mid-1990s. Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster and Frederick Buttel, "Introduction" (Monthly Review, July/August 1998), p.7. The U.S. has been losing well over 1,000 farms per month since 1979. This figure was calculated using data from United States Department of Agriculture National Commission on Small Farms, A Time to Act (USDA, January 1998).

20 The main WTO pact in this area is the Agreement on Agriculture.

21 Barker, op. cit., p.24.

22 The governing WTO rules in this area are found in the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights.

23 Neem is a tree popular in Asia. Long used for its medicinal and agricultural properties, including pesticide uses, transnational corporations have made dozens of patent claims on neem. RAFI, Out of Control (RAFI, October 1998), p.2.

24 The topic of genetically modified crops and their impacts on sustainable agriculture is vast. See Pesticide Action Network North America's Web site, http://www.panna.org, for resources on genetic engineering.

25 For more on structural adjustment, see Walden Bello, Dark Victory (Pluto Press; Institute for Food and Development Policy; and Transnational Institute, 1994).

26 See the Web page "World Bank monitoring" at http://www.panna.org/campaigns/worldBank.html.