FOCUS ON TRADE

Ethical MarketsTrendspotting

NUMBER 144, OCTOBER 2008

IN THIS ISSUE

The collapse of the global financial system heralds the end – at least
for a while – of the fascination with free markets and fancy financial
products. The calls for regulation are coming from every quarter, not
least from some of the most energetic proponents of neo-liberalism
(including Michel Camdessus, Robert Rubin and Martin Wolf, to name
just three). With the future of the financial system at stake, more
stringent regulation is almost certain – even the Princes of Wall
Street realize that “things have to change if they are to stay the
same” – and progressive voices should seize the opportunity to put
ideas on the table. The first article in this issue “The Global
Economic Crisis: An Historic Opportunity for Transformation” lists
some ideas about how the global economy could be re-regulated to work
for workers, communities and the environment.

The financial crisis has also been seized by trade unions and others
as an opportunity to talk about “green jobs” and the “green economy” –
a kind of “green Keynesiansim” that will kick start languishing
economies, revive the productive sector, create “decent” and useful
work, and make a start on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Barak
Obama and Joe Biden, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, and many other European
heads of state are talking about green jobs and promising to throw a
lot of money in that direction. That’s all to the good, but even
“green” jobs can co-exist happily in the framework of globalised
capitalism, in much the same way that “fair trade” and “ecological”
products barely dent the underlying dynamics of the system. In the
following two articles in this issue, Tadzio Mueller and Ulrich Brand
write about why we should mobilize for the United Nations negotiations
on climate change from an anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist
position. For Mueller, the UN summit in Copenhagen in December 2009
offers a Seattle-like moment where the debate on climate change can be
shifted just as the protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999
shifted the debate on globalization. Ulrich Brand also argues for
activists and social movement to take up the climate agenda as part
and parcel of the struggle against neo-liberalism and neo-imperialism.
As he says, although the UNFCCC embodies the political awareness of
climate change, this “awareness is framed in specific ways and in line
with dominant interests and social forces. It is not independent from
neo-liberal and neo-imperial developments.”

Finally in this issue, Joseph Purugganan dissects the Japan
Philippines free trade agreement, and his autopsy reveals some useful
lessons for future campaigns to democratise national trade policy.

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THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS: AN HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY FOR TRANSFORMATION
An initial response to the global economic crisis

THE MOVEMENT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE MOVEMENT!
Tadzio Mueller

TOWARDS RADICAL CRITIQUE AND ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS AND
COPENHAGEN 2009
Ulrich Brand

ANATOMY OF A (BAD) TRADE DEAL: HOW THE PHILIPPINES NEGOTIATED THE JPEPA
Joseph Purugganan

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THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS: AN HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY FOR TRANSFORMATION
This is an initial response from individuals, social movements and non-
governmental organisations in support of a transitional programme for
radical economic transformation Beijing, 15 October 2008.

If you would like to sign on or join the on-line discussion go to
http://casinocrash.org/

PREAMBLE
Taking advantage of the opportunity of so many people from movements
gathering in Beijing during the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, the
Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global South convened
informal nightly meetings between 13 and 15 October 2008. We took
stock of the meaning of the unfolding global economic crisis and the
opportunity it presents for us to put into the public domain some of
the inspiring and feasible alternatives many of us have been working
on for decades. This statement represents the collective outcome of
our Beijing nights. We, the initial signatories, mean this to be a
contribution towards efforts to formulate proposals around which our
movements can organise as the basis for a radically different kind of
political and economic order. Please sign on to this statement by
adding your name in the comments section.

THE CRISIS
The global financial system is unravelling at great speed. This is
happening in the midst of a multiplicity of crises in relation to
food, climate and energy. It severely weakens the power of the US and
the EU, and the global institutions they dominate, particularly the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade
Organisation. Not only is the legitimacy of the neo-liberal paradigm
in question, but the very future of capitalism itself.

Such is the chaos in the global financial system that Northern
governments have resorted to measures progressive movements have
advocated for years, such as nationalisation of banks. These moves are
intended, however, as short-term stabilisation measures and once the
storm clears, they are likely to return the banks to the private
sector. We have a short window of opportunity to mobilise so that they
are not.

THE CHALLENGE AND THE OPPORTUNITY
We are entering uncharted terrain with this conjuncture of profound
crises – the fall out from the financial crisis will be severe. People
are being thrown into a deep sense of insecurity; misery and hardship
will increase for many poorer people everywhere. We should not cede
this moment to fascist, right wing populist, xenophobic groups, who
will surely try to take advantage of people’s fear and anger for
reactionary ends.

Powerful movements against neo-liberalism have been built over many
decades. This will grow as critical coverage of the crisis enlightens
more people, who are already angry at public funds being diverted to
pay for problems they are not responsible for creating, and already
concerned about the ecological crisis and rising prices – especially
of food and energy. The movements will grow further as recession
starts to bite and economies start sinking into depression.

There is a new openness to alternatives. To capture people’s attention
and support, they must be practical and immediately feasible. We have
convincing alternatives that are already underway, and we have many
other good ideas attempted in the past, but defeated. Our alternatives
put the well-being of people and the planet at their centre. For this,
democratic control over financial and economic institutions are
required. This is the “red thread” connecting up the proposals
presented below.

PROPOSALS FOR DEBATE, ELABORATION AND ACTION

Finance

* Introduce full-scale socialisation of banks, not just
nationalisation of bad assets.
* Create people-based banking institutions and strengthen existing
popular forms of lending based on mutuality and solidarity.
* Institutionalise full transparency within the financial system
through the opening of the books to the public, to be facilitated by
citizen and worker organisations.
* Introduce parliamentary and citizens’ oversight of the existing
banking system
* Apply social (including labour conditions) and environmental
criteria to all lending, including for business purposes
* Prioritise lending, at minimum rates of interest, to meet social and
environmental needs and to expand the already growing social economy
* Overhaul central banks in line with democratically determined
social, environmental and expansionary (to counter the recession)
objectives, and make them publicly accountable institutions.
* Safeguard migrant remittances to their families and introduce
legislation to restrict charges and taxes on transfers

Taxation

* Close all tax havens
* End tax breaks for fossil fuel and nuclear energy companies
* Apply stringent progressive tax systems
* Introduce a global taxation system to prevent transfer pricing and
tax evasion
* Introduce a levy on nationalised bank profits with which to
establish citizen investment funds (see below)
* Impose stringent progressive carbon taxes on those with the biggest
carbon footprints
* Adopt controls, such as Tobin taxes, on the movements of speculative
capital
* Re-introduce tariffs and duties on imports of luxury goods and other
goods already produced locally as a means of increasing the state’s
fiscal base, as well as a means to support local production and
thereby reduce carbon emissions globally

Public Spending and Investment

* Radically reduce military spending
* Redirect government spending from bailing out bankers to
guaranteeing basic incomes and social security, and providing
universally accessible basic social services such as housing, water,
electricity, health, education, child care, and access to the internet
and other public communications facilities.
* Use citizen funds (see above) to support very poor communities
* Ensure that people at risk of losing their homes due to defaults on
mortgages caused by the crisis are offered renegotiated terms of payment
* Stop privatisations of public services
* Establish public enterprises under the control of parliaments, local
communities and/or workers to increase employment
* Improve the performance of public enterprises through democratising
management – encourage public service managers, staff, unions and
consumer organisations to collaborate to this end
* Introduce participatory budgeting over public finances at all
feasible levels
* Invest massively in improved energy efficiency, low carbon emitting
public transport, renewable energy and environmental repair
* Control or subsidise the prices of basic commodities

International Trade and Finance

* Introduce a permanent global ban on short-selling of stock and shares
* Ban on trade in derivatives
* Ban all speculation on staple food commodities
* Cancel the debt of all developing countries – debt is mounting as
the crisis causes the value of Southern currencies to fall
* Support the United Nations call to be involved in discussions about
how the to resolve the crisis, which is going to have a much bigger
impact on Southern economies than is currently being acknowledged
* Phase out the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World
Trade Organisation
* Phase out the US dollar as the international reserve currency
* Establish a people’s inquiry into the mechanisms necessary for a
just international monetary system.
* Ensure aid transfers do not fall as a result of the crisis
* Abolish tied aid
* Abolish neo-liberal aid conditionalities
* Phase out the paradigm of export-led development, and refocus
sustainable development on production for the local and regional market
* Introduce incentives for products produced for sale closest to the
local market
* Cancel all negotiations for bilateral free trade and economic
partnership agreements
Promote regional economic co-operation arrangements, such as UNASUR,
the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the Trade Treaty
of the Peoples and others, that encourage genuine development and an
end to poverty.

Environment

* Introduce a global system of compensation for countries which do not
exploit fossil fuel reserves in the global interests of limiting
effects on the climate, such as Ecuador has proposed.
* Pay reparations to Southern countries for the ecological destruction
wrought by the North to assist peoples of the South to deal with
climate change and other environmental crises.
* Strictly implement the “precautionary principle” of the UN
Declaration on the Right to Development as a condition for all
developmental and environmental projects.
* End lending for projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean
Development Mechanism” that are environmentally destructive, such as
monoculture plantations of eucalyptus, soya and palm oil.
* Stop the development of carbon trading and other environmentally
counter-productive techno-fixes, such as carbon capture and
sequestration, agrofuels, nuclear power and ‘clean coal’ technology.
* Adopt strategies to radically reduce consumption in the rich
countries, while promoting sustainable development in poorer countries
Introduce democratic management of all international funding
mechanisms for climate change mitigation, with strong participation
from Southern countries and civil society.

Agriculture and Industry

* Phase out the pernicious paradigm of industry-led development, where
the rural sector is squeezed to provide the resources necessary to
support industrialisation and urbanisation
* Promote agricultural strategies aimed at achieving food security,
food sovereignty and sustainable farming.
* Promote land reforms and other measures which support small holder
agriculture and sustain peasant and indigenous communities
* Stop the spread of socially and environmentally destructive mono-
cultural enterprises.
* Stop labour law reforms aimed at extending hours of work and making
it easier for employers to fire or retrench workers
* Secure jobs through outlawing precarious low paid work
* Guarantee equal pay for equal work for women – as a basic principle
and to help counter the coming recession by increasing workers’
capacity to consume.
* Protect the rights of migrant workers in the event of job losses,
ensuring their safe return to and reintegration into their home
countries. For those who cannot return, there should be no forced
return, their security should be guaranteed, and they should be
provided with employment or a basic minimum income.

CONCLUSION
These are all practical, common sense proposals. Some are initiatives
already underway and demonstrably feasible. Their successes need to be
publicised and popularised so as to inspire reproduction. Others are
unlikely to be implemented on their objective merits alone. Political
will is required. By implication, therefore, every proposal is a call
to action.

We have written what we see as a living document to be developed and
enriched by us all. Please sign on to this statement at the bottom of
the page.

A future occasion to come together to work on the actions needed to
make these ideas and others a reality will be the World Social Forum
in Belem, Brazil at the end of January 2009.

We have the experience and the ideas – let’s meet the challenge of the
present ruling disorder and keep the momentum towards an alternative
rolling!!

See http://casinocrash.org/ for full list of signatures or to join the
blog discussion.

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THE MOVEMENT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE MOVEMENT!
Tadzio Mueller*

The movement’s dead! More precisely: the alter-globalisation movement
as a common place for movements and ‘activists’ to meet and to become-
other, together, linking their struggles under and against the common
referent of neo-liberal globalisation, is dead. Not that the
particular struggles are dead. Nor have we seen the end of counter-
summit mobilisations: as I’m writing this, plans are busily being made
to shut down one summit or another: the G8 in Italy in 2009; NATO’s 60-
year birthday bash in France; and so on and so forth: counter-summits-
r-us?

But somehow these mobilisations don’t pack the same punch as they used
to: how many last hurrahs have there been, how many times have people
mobilised and thought ‘if it fails this time, we’ll stop doing this’?
Even the comparatively powerful German movement could do little more
at the G8 in Heiligendamm than to realise that it’s one thing to bring
tens of thousands onto the street, but quite another for their actions
to resonate beyond the immediate circle of participants.

Don’t get me wrong: the movement didn’t die the ignominious death of
the defeated. In many ways, it also won. And for movements, who must
move to survive, their victories are also often their deaths, for they
live and breathe antagonism, they need an enemy. So what of our enemy?
Let’s ask Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief ideologue, an
eloquent and considered spokesman for the neo-liberal offensive.
Talking about the day when the US Central Bank bailed out a huge bank
to prevent the financial crisis from spreading, he wrote: “Remember
Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free-market
capitalism died.” So neo-liberalism is dead (in some ways), as is
(again: in some ways) the movement against it, of which the explicitly
anti-capitalist current from within which this text is written was
only ever one part. It seems to have lost precisely that which can
forge a movement out of an irreducible multiplicity of struggles, that
which can counter the decomposition of resistance that capital and the
state constantly seek to impose on us. We need a story, a hope, a
hook, to move: and at this point, the alter-globalist movement is
clearly a movement without a hook, without an enemy, without a goal.

THE NEW ‘BIG ONE’?
But as much as there’s a movement without a story, there’s also a
story without a movement: climate change. An increasing number of
policies (even many that have hardly anything to do with the subject)
are being justified in terms of their relation to ‘the climate’. And
ever since being out-manoeuvred by the G8 and especially Chancellor
Merkel at Heiligendamm, the European movements have realised that they
must develop a position and a practice around climate change or risk
irrelevance in this brave new world of green issues. The most advanced
fractions of capital and government apparatuses have spotted a great
way to create political support for a new ‘green fix’ to both the
crisis of over-accumulation (the problem of too much money chasing too
few profitable investment opportunities) that has given us the current
financial chaos, and to the legitimation crisis that global authority
has been suffering since the power of the story of ‘global terrorism’
began to wane. In a way, the fact that everybody is now talking about
this issue is a massive victory for the green movement – but at the
same time it’s meant the final nail in that movement’s coffin: every
single large green NGO is involved up to its neck in the negotiations
about the Kyoto-follow up treaty, and thus unlikely to articulate a
political position that would diverge significantly from the dominant
agendas in the field.

So there’s a movement without a story, and a story without a movement
– which means that, as it stands right now, there is little hope that
climate change will be dealt with in ways that don’t simply further
the interests of states and whatever happens to be the dominant
fraction of capital. And since the default anti-capitalist position on
climate change is that there is a fundamental contradiction between
the requirements of the continued accumulation of capital (that is,
economic growth) on the one hand, and the requirements of dealing with
climate change on the other, this would seem to constitute the perfect
opening for a re-energised anti-capitalist politics that can manage to
connect to people’s widespread worries about climate change, and the
impression that what is being done (Kyoto, Bali, emissions trading,
etc.) is far too little, far too late. These are precisely the
situations where radical social movements have the greatest capacity
to act and ‘make history’, when the usual problem-solving approaches
(these days: create a market around it, or repress it) don’t seem to
provide any believable way of dealing with something that is widely
perceived as a problem. It’s precisely when it seems impossible to
find any solutions that openings exist for social movements to expand
the limits of the possible. On the face of it, the perfect storm…

THE POLITICS OF POINTLESSNESS
… or so it seems. In reality, if the practical difficulties faced by
most really existing attempts to contribute to the emergence of an
effective anti-capitalist movement around the climate change issue are
any guide, things seem a lot more difficult. Looking at it from the
perspective of the global North, there are definitely attempts to
develop an anti-capitalist climate change politics, but each of them
is facing a mounting set of difficulties. Seen from here, it all
begins in the UK in 2006, with a ‘climate action camp’ that aimed to
‘shut down for a day’ a coal fired power station in Northern England,
but more importantly, to provide a space for developing new ideas and
practices for an anti-capitalist climate change politics. Since then,
the idea of organising similar ‘climate action camps’ has inspired
people in Germany, Sweden, the US, Chile, Australia, New Zealand and
elsewhere, and currently this seems to be the main ‘weapon’ in the
emerging climate movement’s repertoire of action (somewhat ironically,
the initial idea for the camp also arose out of the lessons learnt
about the shortcomings of one-off summit protests).

I really don’t want to talk down the importance of these camps – after
all, inspiring so many people in so many different countries is no
mean feat – but from the many critiques of the climate camps, one
thread stuck out: the question of whether these camps were in fact
doing much good beyond satisfying a desire to do something? It feels
good to hang out and camp with ones mates and comrades, but there’s
that nagging question: What do we want? What can we achieve? And does
this whole camping-business, trying to shut down power plants one at a
time, while at the same time constantly fighting not to be drowned out
by the more powerful voices that crowd this political field, stand in
any relation to the magnitude of the challenge of climate change?
That’s the kind of question that’s likely to leave people pretty
frustrated.

To be clear: this is not to say that people shouldn’t organise climate
camps – only that these camps need to be part of a wider project that
gives them some political meaning beyond their highly localised
intervention. We could, of course, hope that this wider meaning — a
certain kind of political globality — would emerge from the links
being formed between the various climate camps happening this year,
but this kind of coordination has been limited to non-existent. No
common ‘demands’ (other than that of being ‘against climate change’,
which is about as politically useful and distinguishing as being
against clubbing baby seals), no common story, no ‘shut down the WTO’,
not even a vague compromise like ‘fix it or nix it’: no ‘another world
is possible’!

So if the UK-movement’s way of dealing with the challenge of climate
change comes across as somewhat limited in its political scope, at the
other end of the spectrum there’s the way the issue has been
approached in Germany. Attempts to kick-start a climate camp-process
here have not only been beset by the usual leftist bickering and
infighting, and there has even already been a split in the process, it
has also come up against another political problem: here, the radical
left is so academic and steeped in the tradition of ‘critical theory’
and ‘deconstruction’ that their main response to the challenge posed
by climate change is to engage in a ‘critique’ of the ‘dominant
climate change discourse’ and the ‘hegemonic role of scientific
knowledge’ in constructing climate change as a crisis. Sure, it’s
important to remember that the reports issued by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) come from a deeply conservative
institution, and to critically reflect on how recourses to ‘scientific
knowledge’ are often used to shut ‘non-experts’ out of political
debates, but ‘Diskurskritik’ can’t be the only response to the climate
change issue. It feels a bit like throwing copies of Adorno and
Foucault at a coming flood and hoping that it’ll just go away.

FROM TIMELESSNESS TO EFFECTIVENESS
But the anti-capitalist left in the global North should be pretty used
to being political ineffective and marginal, small outbursts of
transformative power in particular moments of excess notwithstanding.
What does one ‘social centre’ in Hackney, Kreuzberg or Las Ramblas
really contribute to the struggle against gentrification? Does an anti-
war-demo in San Francisco really, as a film made on the occasion
claims, ‘interrupt this Empire’? Does shoplifting, even conducted en
masse, significantly disrupt processes of capitalist commodity
circulation? To be honest: I don’t know, and I think very few people
who engage in these practices have a clear idea either. But, and this
is the important point, when talking about ‘capitalism’, anti-
capitalists don’t really have to have an answer to that question. One
way of dealing with that is to point to the non-linear dynamics of
change in complex (social) systems, meaning that we can’t know what
effects our actions of today will have tomorrow (think butterfly in
Bali and hurricane in Haiti). Or, by referring to an argument that’s
achieved nearly dogmatic status in anti-capitalist discussions: ‘look,
capitalism hasn’t been around forever, it began in some place at some
point, so it’ll also end at some point’ – much the same could be said
about the universe! I could go on enumerating the various intellectual
tricks that exist to rationalise our relative political irrelevance,
but hope the point is made: that anti-capitalist politics in the
global North exist in a sort of timelessness because we either can’t
or don’t dare to think their effects in the future. Ostriches come to
mind. As does the graffiti sprayed on the wall of a school in
Gothenburg that had been stormed by the cops: ‘But in the end, we will
win!’

And this is where we get back to why it seems so hard for the anti-
capitalist movement to develop a politics around climate change:
whatever rationalisation makes it possible to think that ‘in the end
we will win’ against capital, it’s pretty impossible to think that in
relation to climate change. Against the usual timelessness of anti-
capitalist politics, climate change poses the issue of urgency. And
the problem then becomes how to deal with that urgency. Both positions
described above are attempts to do so, and both are pretty
unsatisfying. The first takes this urgency far too seriously, and
jumps head over heels into a political field dominated by much
stronger players. The second position recognises that the construction
of urgency and the resulting politics of fear are often strategies of
domination – but then contents itself with criticising that
construction, rather than engaging with the urgency of the issue
behind the discourse. And this urgency emerges precisely from a
conflict of times, of temporalities, between the exponential
temporality of capital (where capital perpetually speeds up social
life and production) and the temporality of complex eco-social-
systems, which are of course not static, and can adapt to new
circumstances, but generally not at the speed required by capital – if
change is too fast, that’s when the by now infamous ‘tipping points’
are reached, where changes to particular eco-systems become
irreversible and catastrophic (the ‘switching off’ of the Gulf Stream
being one such example, the melting of polar ice caps another).

So how do deal with this problem of urgency? First, by admitting that
it’s unlikely, actually impossible, that the politically marginal
radical left will be able to effectively slow down the production of
greenhouse gases such as CO2, in a world where the accumulation of
capital is inseparable from the burning of fossil fuels. Neither are
we able to somehow force the faster adaptation of ecological systems
to the speed of capital. But we can intervene into the temporality of
politics, of governmental ‘climate change politics’, whose role it is
to insulate the speed-up effected by capital from social criticism by
creating the illusion that the continued accumulation of capital is
compatible with socio-ecological stability: that, in other words, we
just need to make a few (preferably market-based) adjustments, and can
otherwise continue more or less as we were. The result of this
insulation is that the potentially explosive force of the increasingly
widespread realisation of this antagonism between capital and a
humanity that exists embedded in complex ecological systems is
contained, even captured. Captured so as to provide support for a new
round of accumulation (think: ‘green capitalism’) and the further
extension of political regulations ever deeper into our lives.

FORGET KYOTO!
So again: the anti-capitalist left in the global North can’t ‘stop’ or
even significantly mitigate climate change. To assume that we could
would necessarily leave us trapped in our timelessness, because we
could only ever hope to achieve our goal at some point far, far in the
future – out of real time, as pie in the sky. But we can, with our
limited strength and resources intervene into the insulation of
capital’s time from the ‘slowness’ of genuine democracy. If we once
again leave the depressed certainty of our own decomposition and
timelessness, if we remember that as movements we have the capacity to
be faster than the state, then we can escape from and intervene into
their capture and internalisation of antagonistic energies.

And how do we do that? How do we keep open the political space created
by the increasingly widespread concern about climate change, which has
the potential to produce new ideas and solutions, new possibilities,
that might in turn promise to go beyond capitalism? How can there be
an intervention into the powerful pressures towards the constitution
of a new ‘green capitalism’, towards an’eco-Empire’, a global
authoritarian eco-Keynesianism? If urgency forces us to think in terms
of effectiveness and, what’s more, efficiency, how can our small,
resource-poor wing of the movement effectively deploy our limited
strengths to achieve a maximum outcome with respect to the goal of
creating and/or maintaining space for the development of multiple,
bottom-up, non-capitalist solutions to the climate crisis?

The answer to this question begins with two further questions, and
then takes us back to the beginning of the whole argument. First
question: what is probably the single most important process by which
the governments of the world are trying to insulate capital from
public criticism in relation to climate change? Answer: almost
certainly the Kyoto/Bali-processes, where the world is treated to the
dramas of international high politics, but which in the end produce
little or nothing that would actually protect the climate (just as an
aside: since the signing of the Kyoto-accords, global CO2-emissions
have exceeded even the worst-case scenarios projected by the IPCC),
and where a tiny bit of emissions reductions legitimate a huge pile of
continued production of greenhouse gases – not to speak of the
creation of a whole new market in emissions credits (expected to value
about two trillion US dollars by 2020), much to the delight of global
capital. The follow-up process to Kyoto, which began in Bali in
December 2007, is supposed to be signed at an international summit in
Copenhagen in December 2009.

Second question: where do the strengths of the radical global
movements lie both in comparison to our enemies and to our more
moderate allies? Answer: in the organisation of large-scale,
disruptive summit mobilisations. It is precisely in summit
mobilisations that we have developed something that could be called
‘best practice’, where we have before achieved a substantial political
effect. In Seattle, we not only managed to shut down the conference by
being on the streets, we also exacerbated the multiple conflicts that
existed ‘on the inside’ between the negotiating governments. If we
manage to do the same thing again, and to build a political coalition
around and momentum behind the demand to ‘Forget Kyoto’, we would both
be able to keep open the political space to discuss potential
‘solutions’ to climate change that go beyond the reigning, market-
driven agenda, but also to provide a focal point and common demand for
the emerging global climate movement to rally around. Forget Kyoto –
Shut down Copenhagen 2009!

But why suggest organising yet another big summit protest after
arguing that countersummits have become a lot less effective than they
used to be? Because the politics of climate change in 2008 look very
different from the politics of neo-liberal globalisation in 2008 – in
fact, they look more like the politics of globalisation did before the
WTO-summit in Seattle was shut down. Back then, during the decade of
the ‘end of history’, many knew that neo-liberal capitalism wasn’t
flawless, but there was no recognition, not even on ‘the left’, of a
movement, or maybe even a ‘movement of movements’ that could oppose
it. Seattle created the possibility of seeing the commonality in many
different struggles, of seeing them as all fighting the same enemy. Of
a ‘movement’ in the first place, which is where the argument comes
full circle: the alter-globalist cycle of struggles may have ended,
but its lessons have not gone away, like the importance of avoiding
the ‘one-week-a-year’ movement problem of focusing only on big events.
The emerging climate movement must be rooted in sustainable and
everyday practices of resistance and transformation at all levels, not
just global, but also regional, national or local. But before ‘it’ can
even see itself as ‘a movement’, something is needed to make a mark,
show that there is a position on climate change that’s more radical
than simply asking for more and better emissions trading. That there
are those who don’t just focus on climate change, but also on the
cause of climate change: capitalism. And for that to happen, we might
just need what some people once called a ‘moment of excess’, where
time speeds up, and changes become possible that were impossible
before. A countersummit can do it. So in that sense: the movement is
dead – long live the movement!

* Tadzio Mueller lives in Berlin, where he is active in the emerging
climate action movement, and teaches political science at Kassel
University. He is an editor of Turbulence www.turbulence.org.uk and
can be contacted at tadziom(at)yahoo.com

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RADICAL CRITIQUE AND ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS AND COPENHAGEN
2009
Ulrich Brand*

In the last twenty years, climate change and its potential and real
impacts have become more and more obvious. This is due to the results
of scientific research but also to environmental movements, media,
critical intellectuals, progressive state officials and alternative
energy producers who have focused social and political attention on
the implications of the problem. With the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol, an
international political mechanism was developed in the 1990s.
In the last two years, the issue of climate change has climbed to the
top of the political agenda. This has to do with the publications of
the Fourth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), the Stern Report – the latter with its simple and economistic
message – and with sky-rocking energy prices and the argument that
‘peak-oil’ has been reached, which refers to the fact that from now on
less new oil resources are found than are consumed. The IPCC and Al
Gore won the Peace Nobel Prize, the G8 summits in 2007 in Germany and
2008 in Japan had energy and climate change questions high on the
agenda. The Conferences of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Bali in
December 2007 became a gathering with global mass media coverage.

Nonetheless, we can observe that not much has changed in the last
twenty years. Oil and gas consumption have increased enormously,
production and consumption patterns are still the same and, moreover,
these processes have rapidly been globalised through transnational
capital, state policies and the way of life of a global middle-class.

This has one major reason: Environmental policies in general and
climate change policies in particular are formulated in line with
dominant politics and related interests. Today, the dominant politics
are neo-liberal and neo-imperial, orientated towards competitiveness
and maintaining and enhancing the power of Northern governments,
corporations and societies. Policies are in the interest of the owners
of assets and of the global middle-classes – including the middle-
classes of economically emerging countries such as China, India or
Brazil. The Western life-style still promotes its attractiveness
worldwide. Human well-being and social security are still equated with
economic growth and this means resource-intensive growth of car
production, of airports, of industrialised farming, etc.

THE ROLE OF THE UNFCCC
It is important to recognise that the issue of climate change was
politicised through scientific knowledge, especially through the IPCC.
However, the danger is to frame the problem of climate change
exclusively or predominantly as a global problem which has to be dealt
with globally, i.e. from above, with Western knowledge and through
management techniques.

The many local conflicts around scarce resources and land-use are thus
overshadowed. The many alternatives that exist are downplayed against
a “global problem”. Moreover, many local forms of producing and living
have actually been put under pressure because of globalised capitalism
and also because of a type of climate politics that is shaped by
structures of domination. The development within the agricultural
sector to produce crops for agro-fuels for the world market is merely
the most visible trend.

What has emerged in the last twenty years is a type of global resource
management wherein government officials, business, scientists, some
NGOs and media act together to control the destruction of the
environment. Sometimes, the content of policies is criticised as
insufficient. A critique of the form of politics, however, is not
formulated. This form of intergovernmental politics, i.e. diplomacy
under the pressure of lobby groups searching for consensus, which
systematically leads to weak compromises, is not criticised.
Furthermore, there is a downplaying of the necessity to challenge
corporate power and the forms of living of the global upper and middle-
classes if climate change is to be addressed seriously.

The instruments of global environmental politics are mostly market-
based because “the market” is considered by powerful actors as the
superior means to deal with far-reaching problems like climate change.
Not by chance, the main instrument of the UNFCCC is emission trading.
Moreover, this justifies weak policies “at home” because profound
transformations cannot be promoted if other countries do not
participate. It is a question of competitiveness.

The current division of labour (along the lines of class, gender,
race, age, and international stratification), which is determined by
structures of domination, is hardly problematised in the debates about
socio-ecological transformations. Therefore, environmental policies
have become a moral and efficiency-based strategy aimed at the middle-
classes.

The generalisation of the Western way of life is cynical because
billions of people are poor and lack access even to basic means of
subsistence. However, capitalist dynamics promote these kinds of
production and consumption patterns yet also have attractive
dimensions, such as individuality and certain forms of freedom.
To counter the developments of a global resource management shaped by
structures of domination, we need a broad public debate as well as
practical steps for the necessary transformation of production and
consumption patterns, changes in orientations towards nature, and the
power of states and capital.

The UNFCCC is not the responsible institution for the growth of CO2
emissions and the fossil-fuel mode of development, i.e. for further
climate change. This is a much broader process involving many more
powerful economic and political actors as well as being linked to the
forms of living of the global upper and middle-classes. At the
institutional level, the WTO, IMF and the World Bank who promote trade
liberalisation and structural adjustment policies are the central
driving forces currently damaging relationships between societies and
nature.

Crucially and problematically, the UNFCCC holds out that it is the
most central and most adequate mechanism to stop climate change. But
in the last 15 years it has became evident that through technocratic
approaches very little changes with respect to the problem – on the
contrary, the current ways of life and the dominant policy
orientations are being re-legitimised. The UNFCCC embodies the fact
that there has been a politicised awareness of climate change. This
awareness is framed in specific ways and in line with dominant
interests and social forces. It is not independent from neo-liberal
and neo-imperial developments. Not by chance, the modified domination
of nature through ecological modernisation strategies, Western
knowledge, the prominent role of experts and hopefully “enlightened
leaders”, along with market-based instruments, determine environmental
policies. This is a daily disaster for billions of people.

The political mode of crisis-management that exists on this terrain is
diplomacy and behind this is the pursuit of “national interests” under
the conditions of globalised capitalism and competitiveness. When
governments return from major conferences at which yet again, the
notion of “being at a crossroads” was evoked, they continue to obey
powerful actors such as the automobile industry, seed companies,
industrial farming, meat producers etc. Additionally, we can see that
the environment ministries of the respective governments are
relatively weak as energy issues are usually dealt with by other,
stronger apparatuses.

This is an observable fact in the field of agro-fuels: When it comes
to energy security and profits, critical questions and disastrous
experiences are put aside. The agro-fuel issue is presented by
Southern governments like Brazil or Indonesia as a “growth and
development opportunity”. Agricultural restructurings are determined
by the huge demand in the EU where specific norms are implemented to
mix gasoline and ethanol. But for whom and at what price? The global
middle-class consumers support these policy developments because they
fear high energy prices. Alternatives are left aside or are reduced to
a minor field in the “energy mix”.

Finally, what we experience in the field of environmental politics is
the attempt to re-stabilise the crisis-driven neoliberal-imperial
globalisation project through the portrayal of a progressive image in
environmental policy-making. “World leaders have understood the
problem,” this is what we hear around G8 or UNFCCC summits. But in
reality the current forms of environmental and resource politics
remain shaped by power and do not question existing relationships of
domination. Irresponsible policies like the development of nuclear
power plants are formulated in other forums like the G8 and will
penetrate the UNFCCC discussion and policies.

BEYOND GLOBAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
In order to reorient political and societal actions towards real
alternatives to the dominant forms and contents of climate,
environmental and resource policies, these need to be criticised and
changed.

From an emancipatory perspective, it is of utmost importance to stop
climate change, which means stopping fossil-fuel based productions and
consumption patterns. They affect mostly vulnerable social groups who
are not able to defend themselves against water scarcity or drought,
against torrential rains or flood waters. Such occurrences have
increased because profit is sought in this way and because such
approaches are considered part of “progress” and a comfortable life-
style for many people. These became dominant because of a “modern” and
patriarchal understanding of the domination of nature, which makes its
exploitation, commodification and destruction possible.

Radical social movements and critical NGOs as well as critical
intellectuals and media increasingly recognise that the UNFCCC is not
an adequate mechanism to deal with one of the most severe crisis we
are facing. Like other international political institutions – in the
environmental field or in others -, the UNFCCC is part of a
capitalist, Western, white and masculine global resource management.
It should no longer be legitimised through the participation of
critical NGOs, social movements and other critical actors. We do not
need “sustainable globalisation”, which basically means neo-liberalism
and imperialism.

After 15 years of the coming into force of the UNFCCC in 1994 we can
clearly see that we need more fundamentally different political and
societal action. States are still important but they and their
officials are not the driving forces. On the contrary, they are mainly
an obstacle for serious policies. Changing production and consumption
patterns, life-styles and meanings of a “good life”, corporate power
and the politics of resource management is a broad process. Several
elements need to be considered.

One major element is to put at the forefront a practically rooted
critique of the dogma of competitiveness, linked to technological
developments. There are few governments and social actors who have
understood the dangers of existing trends. What is needed is a re-
politicisation of the “market”. It is not just the assumed effective
mechanism to allocate resources but a highly effective instrument to
produce a more or less opaque domination of some people over others.
The market means power and exploitation along the lines of class,
gender, race and North-South divisions. Therefore, to restrict the
power of industrial and financial corporations is a crucial effort to
be undertaken. But, if massively successful, this might mean less
economic growth with all its implications for profits, the power of
private capital, the tax basis for the state and employment in the
traditional sectors.

An emancipatory politics has to be careful not to be moralistic about
environmental politics. Of course we need less consumption of meat,
cars / auto-mobility and electronic apparatuses etc. But this cannot
be a simple moral claim leaving aside social structures rooted in
power relations.

Alternative and attractive forms of living and producing, of exchange
and of social divisions of labour and alternative identities are
necessary – and they are possible: The protection of the natural
commons (water, biodiversity, air, etc.) against their commodification
is, in many cases, a very concrete struggle. Collective consumption,
the accompanying infrastructures, more energy efficiency and
sustainable goods are not only linked to learning processes but might
also question the power of certain producers and of the speed of
“throw-away” globalisation. We need the conversion of many existing
industries, taking advantage of the enormous knowledge of the
producers that exists therein.

Environmental issues are profoundly linked to the social. Decent work
versus over- exploitation, especially of illegalised migrants and many
workers in the global South obey the same logic of profit and
accumulation which precipitates the destruction of nature. It is
necessary to politicise the immediate interests of workers in cheap
food, energy and other goods which are produced under unsustainable
and unsocial conditions. However, here is also a problem which needs
to be solved. This is because the short-term interests of many people
are linked to unsustainable production and consumption patterns.
Emancipatory socio-ecological orientations and practices need to be
linked to other aspects of life and to a redistribution of social
wealth.

RADICAL-EMANCIPATORY DEMANDS AND CONFLICTS
Many alternatives are thinkable, possible and already exist. We should
ask if the highly politicised topic of climate change opens a way for
more transformative thinking and action. Possibly through socio-
ecological conflicts it can be made clear that much more is at stake
than symbolic policies against climate change through global resource
management: questions of democracy and decision-making, power over
social knowledge and the means of production, the necessary reduction
of working-hours, the valorising of reproductive activities concerning
caring, health, food, etc.

Therefore, we propose an international campaign to radically transform
climate change politics. For that, we need to develop radical demands
and proposals through debates and the exchange of views and
experiences. These should be articulated within actual debates and
problems and alter the interpretation of them, thus offering
possibilities for action.

With our critique of dominant climate change and environmental
policies we are not cynical about climate change and we do not intend
to strengthen the lobby which defends the fossil-fuel path of
development. However, we do not see the solution to the problem in
Western scientific knowledge, in intergovernmental processes and in
ecological modernisation for the Western middle-classes at the expense
of many others, especially the poor, and the material living
conditions on earth.

Politics in times of deep socio-ecological crises has to be designed
differently, as a democratic and informed transformative process,
taking into consideration the many ambiguities but with a view to a
more just world based on solidarity – beyond the dogma of
competitiveness and profitability. We want to reorientate debates and
policies towards fundamental socio-ecological and emancipatory
transformations in conjunction with an acknowledgement of alternative
practices.

* Ulrich Brand teaches political science at the University of Vienna.
He can be contacted at ulrich.brand(at)univie.ac.at

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ANATOMY OF A (BAD) TRADE DEAL: HOW THE PHILIPPINES NEGOTIATED THE JPEPA
Joseph Purugganan

With a majority vote of 16-4, the Philippine Senate ratified the
controversial Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA)
last October 8, 2008 thus paving the way for the implementation of the
controversial trade and investments deal with Japan which had already
been approved by the Japanese Parliament in December 2006.

Despite the Senate nod however, questions continue to hound the deal.
Weeks prior to the vote, a number of Senators, expressing concern over
the constitutional infirmities and the lopsidedness of the deal in
Japan’s favour, were pushing for a re-negotiation of the agreement.

The call for renegotiation was further proof that there really was no
overwhelming support for JPEPA even among supporters of ratification
in the Senate. Senator Manual Roxas II, one of the principal sponsors
of the treaty acknowledged weeks before that JPEPA was poorly
negotiated, as he made a call to reform the way the Philippine
government negotiates trade agreements in light of the dismal JPEPA
outcome.
Just how did the Philippines negotiate JPEPA? Could we have had a
better deal or gotten more out of the agreement had we negotiated
better? Or were the odds stacked up against us from the start?

FULL SPEED AHEAD
For all intents and purposes, the JPEPA negotiations started in
January 2002 when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited
the Philippines in the first leg of his ASEAN tour aimed to gather
support from regional leaders for his “Initiative for Japan-ASEAN
Comprehensive Economic Partnership.”

This visit is significant because it reflected the shift in Japanese
trade policy from a purely multilateral approach to trade, to adopting
a “dual approach” of pursuing regional and bilateral agreements
alongside pushing its agenda in the WTO.

Having secured the nod from the Philippines and the rest of ASEAN,
Japan went full steam ahead in trying to actualize these commitments
in a series of formal and informal meetings.

In May 2002, in her first visit to Japan after having already
expressed support for Koizumi’s ASEAN initiative, Philippine President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proposed the setting up of a working group in
order to study the possibility of establishing an economic partnership
agreement with Japan and put in place a mechanism for bilateral
discussions on JPEPA.

The Working Group on JPEPA was formed, composed of representatives
from concerned government agencies of both parties. The task of the
working group was to study the possible content, substance, and the
coverage of a mutually beneficial economic partnership between the two
countries, including the possibility of forming a free trade agreement
(FTA).

By April 2003, with strong indication from the Working Group of the
common desire of both parties to proceed, separate independent studies
to assess the sustainable impact of JPEPA were initiated.

RESEARCH
By May, through Executive Order 213, President Arroyo established the
Philippine Coordinating Committee (PCC) to study the feasibility of
JPEPA. The PCC is an inter-agency committee co-chaired by the
Undersecretary for International Economic Relations of the Department
of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Undersecretary for International
Trade of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The PCC was
tasked to represent the country in meetings, consultations and
negotiations, the formulation of the recommended Philippine positions,
to conduct consultations with other government agencies and private
sector representatives (as necessary), and to draft a proposed
framework for JPEPA and its Implementing Agreements (IA).

From June to December 2003, the Philippine Institute for Development
Studies (PIDS) initiated a research project to study the feasibility
and desirability of JPEPA. The overall aim of the project was to
address the fundamental question of whether the Philippines should
enter into a Japan-RP Economic Partnership Agreement. PIDS proposed to
answer this question by conducting specific research guided by the
basic principles of first, the Philippines’ agenda and reform
objectives and second, the issue of multilateralism versus bilateralism.

The feasibility of JPEPA was judged by the PIDS studies against the
principal objectives of reforms defined as (1) global competitiveness,
(2) sustainable growth, (3) efficiency in allocation, and (4) poverty
alleviation.

A total of 17 research projects were undertaken under the Japan-
Philippines Economic Partnership Research Project. Two were impact
analysis on the whole economy, nine were analysis on specific sectors
and concerns (agriculture, manufacturing, services trade, tourism,
movement of natural persons) and six were special studies on such
topics as Japanese ODA, rules of origin, and human resource
development among others.

At least 14 out of these 17 studies were prepared for or in
coordination with the Philippine APEC Study Center Network (PASCN) and
PIDS. At least seven of these studies were funded by the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and at least four were funded
through the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan.

A report of the Joint Coordinating Team (JCT) cited the PIDS studies
conclusion that the JPEPA would provide positive impacts both on the
Philippine economy and on poverty reduction on the whole, while the
impact is differential among sectors. The studies also pointed the
need for adjustment measures to maximize benefits of JPEPA, including
mutual recognition, the promotion of movement of natural persons
between the two countries and various cooperation programs.

On the other hand, the Japanese studies projected positive but very
minimal effects on Japan’s GDP of 0.01-0.03 % (Kawasaki) and 1.7-3.03%
increase for Philippine GDP in the long run.

FORMAL NEGOTIATIONS
Very little information on what transpired in the formal negotiating
sessions is available to the public. We do know that the formal
sessions commenced in February 2004 and had at least eight formal
sessions in Manila and Tokyo from February- October 2004. These
sessions were then followed by at least three working level sessions
in Manila from November 2004 to February 2005. What followed next
were consultations/hearings on tariffs, the completion of the text,
legal review, and processes leading to mutual acceptance of the text,
completion of other legal requirements and the joint signing of JPEPA
by leaders.

The PCC is mandated to conduct consultations with private sector
representatives but only as it deems necessary. The conduct of sector
specific consultations became the discretion of the lead national
government agencies. The government however reported that public
consultations were indeed conducted at least three times in a span of
two years (2002-2004) and at least on three more occasions in working
group and JCT meetings there was private sector presence.

In at least one occasion, one member of civil society was present in a
formal negotiating session. In the second round of talks in April 2004
in Tokyo, a researcher from Tambuyog Development Center (TDC) joined
the Philippine negotiating panel as an adviser on fisheries issues of
Undersecretary Segfredo Serrano of the Department of Agriculture (DA).
This was the first and last time that Tambuyog or any other civil
society organization was invited to participate as part of the
Philippine negotiating panel in the JPEPA negotiations.

After the signing of the deal in September 2006, the Executive set its
sights on securing the mandatory approval of the Senate. JPEPA was
officially transmitted to the Senate on August 17, 2007. To prepare
for this process the Philippine government created through
Administrative Order 198 an interagency task force for JPEPA Senate
ratification. The multi-agency JPEPA task force (JTF) was tasked to
put forward to the Senate the benefits, advantages and opportunities
to the Philippine economy of a bilateral agreement with Japan

Hearings on JPEPA were first conducted by the Committee on Trade and
Commerce chaired by Senator Manuel Roxas II in November 2006 before
joint hearings of the Committees of Trade and Commerce and Foreign
Relations were conducted under the leadership of Senator Miriam
Santiago. Santiago conducted a total of nine hearings from September
to December 2007 with each hearing focusing on specific issues
(economics, environment, movement of natural person, constitutional
issues, and agriculture).
The committee report calling for “conditional concurrence” was
completed by April 2008. Santiago however backtracked and deferred her
sponsorship speech on JPEPA opting to secure a side agreement with
Japan first. The side agreement was secured in late August 2008. The
deal is set for plenary debates in the Senate. As of this writing, 12
Senators have signified their intention to approve the deal while at
least five are still toying around with the idea of giving the
agreement back to the executive for re-negotiation.

JAPANESE LESSONS
Being the first bilateral agreement concluded by the Philippines,
JPEPA set a precedent for future bilateral trade negotiations. The
JPEPA negotiations raised a number of critical questions which are
worth examining closely if we are to learn from this process and
reform the way we negotiate such agreements.

The first issue is defining the national agenda. In the case of
JPEPA, at least three elements were instrumental in defining the
substance of the agreement. The first is the use of the Japan-
Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement (JSEPA) as a template for
JPEPA. JSEPA, the very first bilateral economic partnership agreement
(EPA) forged by Japan is considered a springboard or catalyst for
promoting Japan’s economic relations with other ASEAN countries.

The second element, which was evident early on, was the commitment of
both parties to push for an ambitious agreement that is not just a
free trade agreement but covers other areas such as services,
investment, human resources development and other forms of economic
cooperation. Through five meetings of the Working Group –four in
Manila and once in Tokyo — between October 2002 and July 2003, both
parties tossed around proposals for possible elements of the agreement.

For Japan, its negotiators were clearly pushing for greater
liberalization of the investment regime, market access for Japanese
manufactures and improvements in the business environment. For the
Philippines, the main agenda included market access for agricultural
and fisheries products, and movement of natural persons, particularly
targeting market access opening for the healthcare sector.

The third crucial element is research, which provided the empirical
justification to the claims of gains and benefits and which fuelled
the negotiations forward. The PIDS played a central role in the
research part of the negotiation process. While the government
recognizes the area of research as an area of strength for the
Philippines, a number of issues and concerns should be levied against
the JPEPA studies.

The JPEPA research project of PIDS was clearly guided by a trade
policy that is supportive of a more liberal regime for trade and
investment. These studies were conducted after a political decision
at the highest level has already been made to not just proceed, but
see the negotiations through, thereby raising the question of the real
role of these studies. Are they meant to provide empirical basis for
decisions on whether to proceed with the negotiations or are they
meant simply to provide the justification for decisions that have
already been made?

And lastly, how independent are these studies? Of particular concern
with the JPEPA researches is the extent of Japanese influence, both
directly (through funding) and indirectly (through the framework of
addressing what Japan needs rather than what the Philippines wants)
into the outcomes of the researches.

The level of people’s participation in the process is another critical
issue related to the agenda building process. The JPEPA negotiations
have been characterized by critics as a non transparent and secretive
process with minimal space for people’s participation. While the
government claims transparency in the negotiations with a “structured,
step-by-step negotiations process consisting of both formal and
informal meetings, extensive consultation and public hearings,
including attendance in hearings called by the House of
Representatives,” critics rightly point out the non-disclosure of the
text during the negotiations and the absence of a clear mechanism for
people’s participation as obvious indicators of a democracy deficit in
the JPEPA process.

After having identified our aggressive and defensive interests, the
next issue in the whole process is the conduct of the formal
negotiations themselves. Here the concerns are more administrative.
Because this was the Philippines first bilateral agreement of this
nature and scope, the process was largely ad hoc. Inter-agency task
forces were created specific for JPEPA alone. The formulation of
specific chapters was delegated to specific national government
agencies with the PCC mandated to bring all of these together into a
coherent national agenda.

TOXIC WASTE AND THE CONSTITUTION: FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS
Two of the most critical issues that stand out today as major
arguments against the agreement — the dumping of toxic waste from
Japan and the un-constitutionality of JPEPA — which were oddly enough
left unresolved after the formal negotiations process, gives us a
glimpse into the level of coherence and coordination (or the lack
thereof) in the process.

The Magkaisa Junk JPEPA, a broad, multi-sectoral coalition campaigning
against the deal, reported that during the negotiations, upon the
advice of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
to the DTI, toxic wastes were stricken out of the list of tradable
goods in the 2003 working draft of JPEPA only to be re-inserted later
to comply with the Harmonized System (HS).

On the legal and constitutional issues, DTI reported a process of
legal review to address these concerns towards the end of the formal
negotiating process. Two members of the government’s legal review
team Justice Florentino Feliciano and Attorney Ma. Lourdes Sereno, in
their testimonies before the House Special Committee on Globalization,
raised serious concerns over the nature and scope of the agreement and
the implications on existing legislation and administrative and
resource requirements.

Furthermore, Attorney Sereno already raised a red flag on the role of
(the executive) department on trade policy setting and treaty
execution. This is one area of concern levied against JPEPA by
Constitutional expert, Attorney Mervin Magallona when he noted that
several provisions in the JPEPA indicate a blatant usurpation of
Congressional Power.

So although a review process was conducted, there are serious doubts
whether the recommendations of the review panel were even considered
in the final agreement.

The third issue is oversight. What role did Congress play? A House
Resolution calling for an inquiry on JPEPA led to Congressional
hearings conducted under the House Special Committee on Globalization.
To a large extent, the congressional hearings on JPEPA became the main
platform for public debate on the proposed deal. These hearings
compelled the DTI to provide updates on the negotiations to Congress
and an opportunity for groups critical of JPEPA to present their
positions.

The Congressional hearings however failed to compel the Executive to
provide Congress with a copy of the negotiating text, which remained
inaccessible to public scrutiny until the deal was signed in 2006. In
December 2005, Akbayan et al filed a petition before the Supreme Court
to compel the government to publicly disclose the full text of JPEPA.
The Supreme Court however ruled in July 2008 against the petition for
disclosure and found in favour of the exercise of Executive privilege
in the case of JPEPA.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court decision on JPEPA does not invalidate
the need for oversight on deals entered into by the Executive
especially because of their far reaching implications on development.

WAY FORWARD
Examining the JPEPA process leads us to a number of policy options in
reforming the trade negotiation process in the Philippines. We should
start with an honest assessment of Philippine trade policy and how our
adherence to this policy has impacted on development. We should also
examine the way the Philippine government works within ASEAN. There
should also be closer coordination in ASEAN not just in terms of the
ASEAN-wide FTAs that are being negotiated but in relation to the
bilateral efforts of its Member states as well.

There are proposals in Congress for the creation of the Philippine
Trade Representative Office (PTRO), which could pave the way for a
more coherent trade negotiating agenda and a more coordinated and
systematic way of negotiations where inputs from academic and research
institutions, from private sector, and from civil society
organizations and social movements are heard and integrated into the
national agenda. Consultations should be made mandatory rather than
discretionary on the part of the national government agencies.

An important element of participation is access to information. The
enactment of the Freedom of Information Act is an important step
towards ensuring that people have access to crucial documents
including copies of the negotiating texts and become informed
participants in the negotiating process.

The role of Congress in trade negotiations is another area that must
be re-examined seriously in light of the JPEPA experience. Congress
could play a crucial role in addressing the issue of oversight
particularly in light of the Supreme Court Decision upholding the use
of executive privilege in the JPEPA negotiations.

With the Philippines and ASEAN engaged in a number of FTA negotiations
there is an urgent need to get our act together fast to establish a
more systematic, coherent, participatory and more critical
negotiations process if we are to prevent a repeat of JPEPA.

* Joseph Puruggann is a research associate with Focus on the Global
South. He can be contacted at josephp(at)focusweb.org