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Cancun: Corporate giants pull the
strings
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON - A new report reveals the kind of moves
that multinational giants have been making to control
decisions at the World Trade Organization's (WTO)
ministerial summit in Cancun next month.
The
report, by Friends of the Earth International (FOEI),
details several instances where giant corporations have
moved to control government decisions, particularly in
the United States and the European Union (EU).
"The EU and the United States must kick off the
habit of listening so closely to large corporations,"
FOEI chief executive officer Olivier Hoedeman told Inter
Press Service from the group's offices at Amsterdam.
"The report compiles a number of very disturbing
examples of what has gone wrong, and what can go wrong
unless the influence of corporations over the WTO is
halted somehow."
FOEI plans to campaign strongly
at Cancun in Mexico during the WTO ministers' meeting
September 10-14 to check the power of corporations over
WTO policy decisions that could become binding on
governments.
"Behind the rhetoric about
'rules-based trade', 'liberalization' and the 'Doha
Development Round', the reality is that the WTO's trade
and investment rules are consistently being shaped
around the interests of transnational corporations,
consolidating their global expansion and removing any
remaining obstacles," says the report "Business rules in
the WTO: Who pays the price?" released in London on
Thursday.
The report is presented as a guide for
action by citizens. "A consistent and focused activist
challenge to corporate-led trade policies is the only
hope for making trade and investment serve people and
the environment," FOEI says in the report.
The
report looks at the impact of corporations on decisions
in four key areas: food, health and environmental
standards, access to essential medicines, control over
foreign investment and access to essential services.
Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau Federation
have been pressuring the US government to use the WTO to
force genetically modified (GM) food onto a hostile EU
consumer market, the report says.
In 2000,
Monsanto, the US firm taking the lead in the development
of GM foods, spent more than US$2 million on lobbying
the US government, the report says. This gave the
company direct access to officials and negotiators. The
company now has representation on the Agricultural
Policy Advisory Committee for Trade, and the official
Biotech Advisory Panel.
The case for GM foods is
being promoted also by the American Farm Bureau
Federation, ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the
most powerful organizations in Washington, the report
says.
The FOEI report warns of the danger to
environmental protection during negotiations at Cancun.
Lobby groups want WTO rules to preside over Multilateral
Environmental Agreements (MEAs), and there is "every
likelihood that WTO will prevail", the report says. Once
trade measures are included in a MEA, the right of
governments to rule in favor of the environment would be
restricted.
The report points out that the 38
major industry lobby groups that make up the Business
and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
are supporting the WTO on MEAs.
The report
includes further warnings on the impact on medicines
from developments on the Trade-related aspects of
intellectual property rights (TRIPS). A 20-year patent
protection period makes drugs inaccessible to the
poorest.
Agreement was reached at the last WTO
ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, in 2001 to override
patents in poor countries. There were important
agreements reached on treatment for HIV, malaria and
tuberculosis, but other diseases remain uncovered.
The report points to the "enormous influence of
drug companies". The combined worth of the world's top
five drug companies is twice the combined gross national
income (GNI) of all of sub-Saharan Africa, the report
points out.
The US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer
spent $3.4 million in 2000 to lobby the government.
Pharmacia, which later merged with Pfizer spent $3.7
million. As a result, the US policy on TRIPS bears a
"striking similarity to the wishes of the industry lobby
groups", the FOEI report says.
The report points
out that the tobacco giant Philip Morris is strongly
backing moves to bring in a multilateral investment
agreement that could among other things give
corporations the right to sue states directly.
With business spread over 148 countries, Philip
Morris is campaigning for a WTO investment agreement
through the United States Council of International
Business, and the US chapter of the International
Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a key advocate of a WTO
investment agreement. Such an agreement would give
corporations deep inroads into the markets of developing
countries. That 10 million lives a year will be lost due
to smoking by 2030 is another matter, the report says.
Water giants including Suez and Vivendi are
seeking to promote further private sector involvement in
water industries and privatizations. "Suez's extensive
involvement in corporate lobby groups provides it with
excellent access to key global decision makers," the
report says.
Among the lobby groups it is acting
through are the International Chamber of Commerce, the
transatlantic Business Dialogue, the World Business
Council for Sustainable Development and the European
Roundtable for Industrialists.
(Inter Press
Service)
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