Chile Forest Project Tests Free Trade
8/20/00
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
By Forests.org
The Cascada lumber project planned for Southern Chile has become a test case of whether free trade agreements, in this case between Chile and Canada, will honor commitments to environmental protection. A Chilean NGO is taking the Cascada project to the Chile-Canada Commission for Environmental Co-operation set up to arbitrate environmental disputes under the free trade agreement. Shockingly, the environmental impact study for the project only covers the 177 hectare area of the project's processing plant, and includes no data on how the project would biologically and ecologically affect the immense biological wealth of local forests. 69,039 square kilometres of native forest, some of the most biodiverse and endemic temperate rainforests in the World, would be devastated by the project -- but are not mentioned in the environmental study. Failure of the various treaty commissions to halt this senseless liquidation of priceless ancient ecosystems signals that free trade, even when accompanied by environmental protocols, is incompatible with ecological sustainability. This article is a couple weeks old, but I thought it important to pass on nonetheless.
g.b.
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Forest Project Puts Canada Treaty to Test
[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
August 4, 2000
Gustavo Gonz lez
SANTIAGO, Aug 4 (IPS) - A lawsuit environmental groups filed against the Cascada lumber project slated for southern Chile has turned into a test of the environment protocol of the free trade agreement the South American country signed with Canada in 1997.
The Chile-Canada Commission for Environmental Co-operation took up the complaint initiated by the 'Fiscala del Medio-Ambiente' (FIMA - Environmental Prosecutors), a non-governmental organisation of attorneys that seeks to prevent the Cascada project from materialising, citing its negative ecological impacts.
If the binational commission, based in Canada, ultimately determines that the treaty's environmental standards have not been fully applied throughout the approval process for the project, the Chilean government risks charges of non-compliance with the 1997 free trade accord.
If this occurs, the case moves to the Joint Committee for Petition Review, another body created by the Chile-Canada treaty, to carry out an in-depth analysis of the charges and then issue a ruling.
This would set a precedent for future trade accords that Chile is currently negotiating with individual countries or blocs from the industrialised world, something activists see as a positive for environmental protection.
The business community, however, maintains that if this dispute goes any further, it will send a negative message to foreign investors as far as risks they might face in this country.
Chile is negotiating a trade and integration treaty with the European Union and is still bound by trade agreements with the United States, both through bilateral accords and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The Cascada project, slated for construction 1,100 km south of Santiago in Ilque bay, southeast of Puerto Montt, is a partnership of the US-based Boise Cascade and Chile's Maderas C›ndor.The 180-million-dollar project involves construction of a plant in Ilque, a coastal town of 700 people, to process wood taken from nearby forests to make plywood and wood chips.
The plant would be supplied with logs purchased from third parties and would have the capacity to process a million cubic metres of wood per year, which represents a major threat to the area's forests, say ecologists.
The environmental impact study for the project, which was approved under former president Eduardo Frei, did not include data on how the project would affect the biological wealth of local forests.
The study mentions the 177 hectare area the Ilque plant would occupy, but ignores the 69,039 square kilometres of native forest that would be devastated by the project, say the plant's detractors.
It was this omission that prompted FIMA to file the complaint with the Chile-Canada Commission for Environmental Co-operation with the backing of Chilean environmental groups and of the Inter- American Association for the Defence of the Environment.
The commission came about as part of the environmental measures of the trade treaty Frei signed with Canada in 1997, after failing to gain Chile's full admission into NAFTA the year before.
The treaty with Canada, which also includes a labour protocol, was the first one Chile had signed with an industrialised country, after signing numerous accords with Latin American countries that did not take environmental factors into account.
International environmental organisations adopted the Cascada project as a symbol of the defence of temperate rain forests as they set their sights on protests against the so-called Millennium Round of international trade talks.
The groups took part in the massive demonstrations in the US city of Seattle outside the third ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation, held Nov 29 to Dec 3, 1999.
The Chilean environmental groups accuse the Chile-US partnership of having lobbied the National Environmental Commission (Conama) to win approval for the project.
Biologist Adriana Hoffman was designated by current president Ricardo Lagos to serve as Conama's leader. Until March, Hoffman headed the Defenders of the Chilean Forest organisation, an umbrella group that has energetically fought the Cascada project.
She has disqualified herself from participating as the Chilean government representative in the case initiated by FIMA before the Chile-Canada commission. (END/IPS/tra-so/ggr/ag/ld/00)