Ten Years of NAFTA

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

Dec 22 2003 (IPS) - Amidst both enthusiastic applause and loud condemnation, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) reaches its 10th anniversary on Jan. 1, 2004. Relegated to the back seat, environment and labor rights have been only accessory issues in that trajectory. NAFTA is a regional treaty involving Canada, Mexico and the United States to create a free trade zone and, originally, with a goal of opening borders in 2005. Other objectives include eliminating trade barriers and facilitating trans-border circulation of goods and services, respecting competition, increasing investment opportunities and ensuring intellectual property rights.

The first decade of NAFTA has left a bittersweet taste. Food First, a non-governmental food security watchdog group, says that in Mexico, while economic reports celebrate export growth — with more than 80 percent going to the United States — the agricultural sector is suffering the impacts of subsidies for U.S. products, against which Mexican farmers cannot compete.

Meanwhile, big U.S.-based manufacturers have cut production costs by moving their factories — textile, automobile, electronics — to Mexico. The U.S. Department of Labor has tallied a lost of 500,000 jobs in the United States, ostensibly as the result of NAFTA.

A study about the negotiating process states that when the leaders of the three countries agreed in 1990 to work on creating the treaty, they didn't expect environmental and labor issues to be important for ratification. But that same year, a small group of activists launched a campaign, targeting the U.S. Congress, so that their positions would be included in the talks.

Environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund, National Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation monitored and supported the process for creating an international body in charge of ensuring respect for the environment, with the authority to impose non-commercial sanctions.

But other organizations, including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Public Citizen, resoundingly rejected the process, and demanded that U.S. companies operating in other countries must be required to comply with U.S. environmental laws.

The result was the creation in 1994 of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), which operates under the terms of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). Its mandate is to attend to shared environmental concerns and to prevent trade-related environmental disputes among the three NAFTA partners.

That same year, the Commission for Labor Cooperation was founded to improve working conditions and living standards for employees, and to promote 11 Labor Principles.

The two commissions are the first to link environmental and labor issues with an international trade treaty.

In early 2004, an independent committee made up of environmental officials will assess the operations and effectiveness of the NAAEC