Safe trade
Encyclopedia
Safe trade is a slogan advocated by Greenpeace
in its desire to "green
" the World Trade Organisation and the Doha Development Round. It is designed to compete with "free trade
" as a concept.
Safe trade is generally seen as a single framework of rules worldwide to drastically inhibit the flow of alien organism
s (e.g. Genetically modified organism
s, imported animals) across the borders of ecoregion
s, to preserve their natural wild biodiversity
. It seeks to prevent ecological disasters caused by imported organisms or untested genetic
technologies, and to augment and increase local natural capital
by encouraging soil remediation, precision agriculture
, and local consumption of the native
species
, rather than imported organisms and heavy use of pesticide
s.
advocacy
is the Biosafety Protocol agreed in Montreal
in January 2000. Although it relied on the weaker legal principle of Informed Consent
and not the much stronger Precautionary Principle
language sought by advocates, the protocol was considered by most to be a victory that could enhance both biosafety
and biosecurity
.
Other safe trade reforms seek to advance sustainability
by reducing reliance on energy
subsidies and oil
-based transport
, and (indirectly) improves equity
in economic affairs - that is, it promotes a safer political economy
which is more respectful of life
in general.
Safe trade is a major goal of systems of Bioregional democracy and is often advocated alongside it, e.g. by Greens
. Both are also implicitly related to Community-Based Economics
, as local trade in local goods with no reliance on alien organisms presents no ecological risk to its genome
s, soil
, or drainage basin
s. Accordingly, some advocates argue, local trade in any native species within an ecoregion's borders should not be taxed at all, as it presents little or no ecological risk compared to imported goods, and so requires little or no regulation
, labelling, inspection
, or other expenses.
The assumption that imports carry moral hazard
s, and that tax, trade, tariff measures should compensate for harms done, is shared by advocates of fair trade
whose programs address, in addition, more overt social justice
concerns of human
beings, such as the maintenance of the "human capital
" of a region. Both initiatives are alternatives to free trade
, which has no such controls, and generally permits and encourages free transit
in goods (but not, in general, labour) across ecological and social borders.
A broader understanding of biosecurity
that is emerging under threat of biological warfare
, and the fear that such economically devastating events as the mad cow disease epidemic could recur, either deliberately (as an act of bioterrorism
) or by accident due to unrestricted imports, is causing some nations, notably New Zealand
, to adopt relatively harsh restrictions against imported organisms. As one objective of asymmetric warfare
is to cause attacks to appear initially as accidents, or blame slow responses on apparently incompetent governments, there is some concern that spreading a virulent organism among animals would be an effective way to attack humans, damage economies, and discredit governments who are lax on biosecurity
. Technologies for scanning for dangerous organisms at ports and markets are also becoming more reliable and less expensive. However, no bio-defense solution seems to be able to compete with a simple reduction of import volumes, and its corresponding reduction in risk of any accidents.
and agriculture
aspects of biosecurity
are dissimilar, unlikely to converge in the form of an attack disguised as an accident, and require such differential prevention and response measures that there is little risk reduced in altering the fundamental structure
of trade relationships to accommodate a robust regime of biosecurity
. Such critics usually argue instead that emergency services' biodefense
measures are sufficient to handle outbreaks of any diseases or alien organisms, and that such outbreaks are unlikely to be long sustained or deliberately masked as agricultural accidents. This, to the advocates, seems like wishful thinking.
in the UK, smoke from which they calculated (based on dioxin levels) was to be expected to kill several hundred Britons from cancers in this generation. Safe trade, they argue, would have removed the need for any such measures, as vaccination
of British beef cattle would have been possible (the burning was to prevent British exports of beef from being rejected by its trade partners, who would not have been able to tell vaccinated from infected beef), and the foot-and-mouth disease was not so dangerous to humans that it could have justified dooming so many fellow citizens to die of the dioxin-caused cancers. The burning, they argue, was justified only by bad trade rules that spread infection and advise dangerous cures that are worse than the ailment itself.
Another argument supporting safe trade rules is that there are links between primate extinction and deforestation
in the regions where primates are abundant, i.e. the Amazon rainforest
, African rainforest, and Sumatran rainforest. Fail to prevent devastating logging in these regions, advocates claim, and a Great Ape species will likely become extinct, causing a critical link to the human past to be permanently lost. Accordingly, preventing logs from these forests from reaching foreign markets has been a major focus of Greenpeace
actions, especially in 2002.
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
in its desire to "green
Green Movement
The Green Movement refers to a series of actions after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office...
" the World Trade Organisation and the Doha Development Round. It is designed to compete with "free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
" as a concept.
Safe trade is generally seen as a single framework of rules worldwide to drastically inhibit the flow of alien organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
s (e.g. Genetically modified organism
Genetically modified organism
A genetically modified organism or genetically engineered organism is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. These techniques, generally known as recombinant DNA technology, use DNA molecules from different sources, which are combined into one...
s, imported animals) across the borders of ecoregion
Ecoregion
An ecoregion , sometimes called a bioregion, is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than an ecozone and larger than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural...
s, to preserve their natural wild biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
. It seeks to prevent ecological disasters caused by imported organisms or untested genetic
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
technologies, and to augment and increase local natural capital
Natural capital
Natural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...
by encouraging soil remediation, precision agriculture
Precision agriculture
Precision farming or precision agriculture is a farming management concept based on observing and responding to intra-field variations.It relies on new technologies like satellite imagery, information technology, and geospatial tools...
, and local consumption of the native
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...
species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
, rather than imported organisms and heavy use of pesticide
Pesticide
Pesticides are substances or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling or mitigating any pest.A pesticide may be a chemical unicycle, biological agent , antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest...
s.
Proposal
An important achievement of safe tradeTrade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
advocacy
Advocacy
Advocacy is a political process by an individual or a large group which normally aims to influence public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions; it may be motivated from moral, ethical or faith principles or simply to protect an...
is the Biosafety Protocol agreed in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
in January 2000. Although it relied on the weaker legal principle of Informed Consent
Informed consent
Informed consent is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards. As a literal matter, in the absence of fraud, it is redundant. An informed consent can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the...
and not the much stronger Precautionary Principle
Precautionary principle
The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those...
language sought by advocates, the protocol was considered by most to be a victory that could enhance both biosafety
Biosafety
Biosafety: prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health .Biosafety is related to several fields:*In ecology ,...
and biosecurity
Biosecurity
Biosecurity is a set of preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive alien species, living modified organisms...
.
Other safe trade reforms seek to advance sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
by reducing reliance on energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
subsidies and oil
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
-based transport
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
, and (indirectly) improves equity
Equity (economics)
Equity is the concept or idea of fairness in economics, particularly as to taxation or welfare economics. More specifically it may refer to equal life chances regardless of identity, to provide all citizens with a basic minimum of income/goods/services or to increase funds and commitment for...
in economic affairs - that is, it promotes a safer political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
which is more respectful of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
in general.
Safe trade is a major goal of systems of Bioregional democracy and is often advocated alongside it, e.g. by Greens
Green Movement
The Green Movement refers to a series of actions after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office...
. Both are also implicitly related to Community-Based Economics
Community-based economics
Community-based economics or community economics is an economic system that encourages local substitution. It is most similar the lifeways of those practicing voluntary simplicity, including traditional Mennonite, Amish, and modern eco-village communities...
, as local trade in local goods with no reliance on alien organisms presents no ecological risk to its genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
s, soil
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
, or drainage basin
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
s. Accordingly, some advocates argue, local trade in any native species within an ecoregion's borders should not be taxed at all, as it presents little or no ecological risk compared to imported goods, and so requires little or no regulation
Regulation
Regulation is administrative legislation that constitutes or constrains rights and allocates responsibilities. It can be distinguished from primary legislation on the one hand and judge-made law on the other...
, labelling, inspection
Inspection
An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activity...
, or other expenses.
The assumption that imports carry moral hazard
Moral hazard
In economic theory, moral hazard refers to a situation in which a party makes a decision about how much risk to take, while another party bears the costs if things go badly, and the party insulated from risk behaves differently from how it would if it were fully exposed to the risk.Moral hazard...
s, and that tax, trade, tariff measures should compensate for harms done, is shared by advocates of fair trade
Fair trade
Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards...
whose programs address, in addition, more overt social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
concerns of human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
beings, such as the maintenance of the "human capital
Human capital
Human capitalis the stock of competencies, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value. It is the attributes gained by a worker through education and experience...
" of a region. Both initiatives are alternatives to free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
, which has no such controls, and generally permits and encourages free transit
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
in goods (but not, in general, labour) across ecological and social borders.
A broader understanding of biosecurity
Biosecurity
Biosecurity is a set of preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive alien species, living modified organisms...
that is emerging under threat of biological warfare
Biological warfare
Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...
, and the fear that such economically devastating events as the mad cow disease epidemic could recur, either deliberately (as an act of bioterrorism
Bioterrorism
Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form. For the use of this method in warfare, see biological warfare.-Definition:According to the...
) or by accident due to unrestricted imports, is causing some nations, notably New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, to adopt relatively harsh restrictions against imported organisms. As one objective of asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly....
is to cause attacks to appear initially as accidents, or blame slow responses on apparently incompetent governments, there is some concern that spreading a virulent organism among animals would be an effective way to attack humans, damage economies, and discredit governments who are lax on biosecurity
Biosecurity
Biosecurity is a set of preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive alien species, living modified organisms...
. Technologies for scanning for dangerous organisms at ports and markets are also becoming more reliable and less expensive. However, no bio-defense solution seems to be able to compete with a simple reduction of import volumes, and its corresponding reduction in risk of any accidents.
Opposition
Critics of safe trade argue that the militaryMilitary
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
and agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
aspects of biosecurity
Biosecurity
Biosecurity is a set of preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive alien species, living modified organisms...
are dissimilar, unlikely to converge in the form of an attack disguised as an accident, and require such differential prevention and response measures that there is little risk reduced in altering the fundamental structure
Fundamental structure
In Schenkerian analysis, the fundamental structure is a specific musical pattern that occurs at the most remote level of structure. A basic elaboration of the tonic triad, it consists of the fundamental line accompanied by the bass arpeggiation...
of trade relationships to accommodate a robust regime of biosecurity
Biosecurity
Biosecurity is a set of preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive alien species, living modified organisms...
. Such critics usually argue instead that emergency services' biodefense
Biodefense
Biodefense refers to short term, local, usually military measures to restore biosecurity to a given group of persons in a given area who are, or may be, subject to biological warfare— in the civilian terminology, it is a very robust biohazard response. It is technically possible to apply...
measures are sufficient to handle outbreaks of any diseases or alien organisms, and that such outbreaks are unlikely to be long sustained or deliberately masked as agricultural accidents. This, to the advocates, seems like wishful thinking.
Support
Advocates point to the costs of emergency measures such as burning over one million cows suspected of having foot-and-mouth diseaseFoot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease or hoof-and-mouth disease is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids...
in the UK, smoke from which they calculated (based on dioxin levels) was to be expected to kill several hundred Britons from cancers in this generation. Safe trade, they argue, would have removed the need for any such measures, as vaccination
Vaccination
Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material to stimulate the immune system of an individual to develop adaptive immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by many pathogens...
of British beef cattle would have been possible (the burning was to prevent British exports of beef from being rejected by its trade partners, who would not have been able to tell vaccinated from infected beef), and the foot-and-mouth disease was not so dangerous to humans that it could have justified dooming so many fellow citizens to die of the dioxin-caused cancers. The burning, they argue, was justified only by bad trade rules that spread infection and advise dangerous cures that are worse than the ailment itself.
Another argument supporting safe trade rules is that there are links between primate extinction and deforestation
Deforestation
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....
in the regions where primates are abundant, i.e. the Amazon rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
, African rainforest, and Sumatran rainforest. Fail to prevent devastating logging in these regions, advocates claim, and a Great Ape species will likely become extinct, causing a critical link to the human past to be permanently lost. Accordingly, preventing logs from these forests from reaching foreign markets has been a major focus of Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
actions, especially in 2002.