Trade Deals Boosting Climate Change: The Food Factor

Biofuels are another form of polluting energy which, along with fossil fuels, may get a boost from the latest trade deals. This is especially when investment chapters of trade deals try to "level the playing field" for foreign investors by establishing rules on "national treatment" and "most favoured nation", which makes access to land for the production of biofuels much easier. New patenting rules imposed through these deals also make it easier for corporations to engage in technology transfer, knowing that they will enjoy monopoly rights in the signatory countries. Already, EU climate policies have bolstered massive land grabbing in Africa for the production of ethanol for European markets. China, which currently sources ethanol from so-called free trade agreement partners Pakistan and Vietnam, is also investing heavily now in Brazil for this very purpose (a first ever shipment of Brazilian ethanol for China just left South America). The Canadian biofuel industry expects to gain a new C$50 million market opening in the EU thanks to CETA. 22 Many biofuel crops -- sugar cane, sugar beet, sweet potato, oil palm, maize, sorghum, oilseed rape -- can be interchangeably used in the food industry, too.

If the TTIP agreement between the US and the EU goes through, modellers say that the US will see a big increase in bioethanol and biodiesel production and exports to the EU who, conversely, will see a big rise in its sugar production and exports to the US. 23 The knock-on effects in Brazil, Argentina and China will be important, too.

Despite its poor scorecard in terms of human rights, land rights and carbon emissions, biofuel production is expected to be increasingly promoted as a renewable energy under climate mitigation strategies, and trade and investment deals will be facilitating this.

6. The promotion of local food economies undermined

"Buy national" or "buy local" programmes as well as country-of-origin labelling regulations, are generally considered discriminatory and trade distorting under so-called free trade doctrine. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) did little to discourage these initiatives, but new fangled bilateral and regional trade deals could go much further. The EU particularly wants to gain much more access, for European companies, to US public markets at all levels (federal, state, local) under TTIP. Food sovereignty advocates and practitioners see this as a potential threat to local food economies that groups have been painstakingly building over the last decades (e.g. food policy council initiatives to support the use of local foods in public services like schools and hospitals). 24 Any moves to make "go local" or "use local" illegal in the food sector will automatically result in increased climate destabilisation. 25

The same is true of initiatives to support "green" purchasing or programmes to require purchasing from small- and medium-sized enterprises in the name of mitigating climate change. Both of these types of effort can be contested by companies as discriminatory. Free trade agreements and investment treaties typically have an investor-state dispute mechanism that allows companies to challenge governments policies like these. Sometimes the challenge results in huge financial compensation for the company on the losing end of such laws. Sometimes it causes governments to change policy to avoid such lawsuits.

Just like in the energy sector, we need to address consumption to address climate change. Increasing production and trade, or just making it greener, will not alleviate the problem. Since governments agree that 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock and that 74% of these come from beef and dairy, we have a great opportunity to positively eliminate a big part of the climate problem through local initiatives. But to do this, we need to defeat the trade deals and ideology that claim that promoting "local" economies is anti-free market and somehow bad for us. (It is only bad for the multinationals!

7. Food security measures made illegal

In 2013, governments prodded by corporate interests, mainly coming from the US, tried to make it a WTO rule that public procurement of food stuffs in times of crisis should be considered a form of trade-distorting farm subsidy. Many governments purchase farm products from farmers to stabilise markets, provide guaranteed prices and run stockpiles or distribution systems in the public interest. The ravages cause by climate change -- floods, drought, typhoons, etc -- in a world of deregulation and corporation concentration make food shocks more common and more threatening. That means these basic food security measures and strong public procurement programme are more and more needed. Ironically, as soon as the Paris climate talks end in December, governments will fly to Nairobi for a WTO ministerial meeting to decide whether such measures will be considered lawful or not under the global trade regime.

Time to stop destabilising the climate!

Food consumption patterns are shifting. The Western diet is spreading, particularly in the global South, bringing with it problems of health but also increasing climate pressure. (Some people say we need diet change, not climate change.) Commodity traders, agribusiness firms, retail chains, private equity groups and other kinds of corporations that finance and run the industrial food system have a keen interest in expanding business in those very markets. Trade agreements are a great tool to do that, but it's not just a North-South affair. Brazilian companies are competing with Thai counterparts for emerging market shares in Africa, Russia or the Middle East. Australia wants a bigger part of the action in China who is doing more business with the US. And so on.

We have to wake up and do the math. If we want to deal with climate change, we have to cut consumption of some foods and that means cutting production and trade as well. Luckily, it is quite do-able. But it does require a structural scaling back of "Big Food" and "Big Retail" and those who finance them. Instead, small- and medium-sized farms, processing and markets, supported by public procurement and financing, could do the job better. It requires a push, and bringing the different struggles around climate change together with the struggles for food sovereignty and against corporate-driven trade agreements.

What to do?

• Join the growing campaigns against major trade deals like TTIP, TPP, RCEP, TiSA and CETA. See bilaterals.org for links to key groups and more information.
• Start a focused campaign on trade, climate and food, to show how trade deals your government is negotiating will specifically affect greenhouse gas emissions from food and get them stopped
• Raise the issue of food and food trade in local discussions and actions you're involved in to battle climate change. Come to Paris for the mobilisations outside the COP21. There will be a "trade" bloc in the street march, demanding a stop to TTIP and CETA and other newfangled trade deals. And there will be a day of action on 9 December dedicated entirely to food, agriculture and climate change.
• Use your imagination to develop concrete initiatives to reduce (y)our reliance on the industrial food system and shrink demand for their products. Start a boycott action -- this is what food industry leaders fear most.
• Get more aware about the climate impact of the foods you eat and initiate, join or strengthen a local food initiative, be it a coop, school programme, an AMAP (Association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture), a CSA (Community-supported agriculture scheme), farmers' market"

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