MEDIA ADVISORY
September 13, 2003
Global Forest Coalition
For forests WTO stands for “World Terror
Order”
Together with climate change, the WTO
style trade is the most serious threat to
biodiversity of our times, for is the main
engine driving unsustainable agricultural
expansion, privatization of natural areas and
resources never privatized before, and
genetic contamination of crops and
nature.
Proponents of so-called ‘trade
liberalization’, who envision a world with no
competition for the few corporations they
represent, prescribed privatization of all
profitable assets on the horizon. “Anything
that could yield a buck should be kept out of
the people’s reach”, says Simone Lovera with
Friends of the Earth International. “This is
the real agenda for Cancun”, concludes.
Forests are no exception; the trillions
worth in forests have to be engulfed by
corporate northern concerns. During the
interim period between the Doha and the
Cancun WTO ministerial meetings, a series of
regional ‘integration’ processes tried to lay
the grounds for the final blow at Cancun. The
message throughout these processes is clear:
no public rights or interest should remain
unchallenged; the public should become a
‘customer’ of the new owners of nature.
Natural areas, including national parks and
Indigenous Peoples’ territories are in the
aim.
"The livelihoods of millions of people
throughout the world will get a price tag, if
you can’t pay for it you’re out” says Marcial
Arias with International Alliance of
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical
Rain Forests. “The companies will get their
fees, for access or use of ‘their’ resources
and everybody will loose the stewardship
provided by the people, but governments don’t
seem to care about this, they don’t realize
it’s human rights they’re tempering with”,
concludes Mr. Arias.
At the root of most deforestation
processes one can find international trade as
one of its major causes", says Ricardo
Carrere from the World Rainforest Movement.
"By facilitating corporate access to
resources from forest areas –wood, minerals,
oil, land for export-oriented agriculture or
cattle-raising- the WTO will further
contribute to forest loss and to the
violation of local dwellers' human rights",
he adds.
José Villalba, from the Carpenters and
Woodworkers Association of Concepción,
Paraguay warns: “beware if you are a producer
from an Indigenous Peoples or local
community, selling your products and, at the
same time, receiving some sort of grant from
other institutions, ‘free traders’ say that
you’ll be unfairly competing with the other
boys and putting them in a disadvantageous
position, because you’re getting a subsidy
and that’s why your community products must
be levied … greed has no limits! What’s
needed instead is an agreement to immediately
compensate our communities for the
contributions made to all societies around
the world through the sustainability of our
livelihoods and that agreement should be kept
out of grab of the WTO”, adds Villalba.
Miguel lovera, Coordinator of the Global
Forest Coalition would prefer that “instead
of planning to strangle communities even
further, countries must stop distorting the
market.” “For instance (recalls Lovera) the
European Union pays their farmers some $2 per
day per cow kept, more than the entire daily
farmers’ income in many countries and
handouts to cotton farmers in the United
States depreciate the international prices of
this textile in about a quarter of its market
value. So far, in most cases, the reaction to
these brand of ‘free market competition’ is
more deforestation to try to achieve some
economic benefit or, at least, to break
even”.
Finally, the Global Forest Coalition
believes that the US, the EU and other OECD
Governments, must annul production and export
subsidies that make dumping possible and
instead help communities revert the
unfavorable place they have historically
endured.
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