----- Original Message ----- From: Claudia K White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 6:22 PM Subject: [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 20:39:14 From: KOLA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment <+>=<+>KOLA Newslist<+>=<+> Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 00:45:55 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: power4u <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment sorry for cross postings if any or for duplicates if you have received this before. current ticket prices from LAX and back are $1560.50. that is a discounted price. please contact bob greenberg at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 612-840-6322 if you are interested in purchasing a discounted ticket. we need to act soon or the price may go up again. you can fly from nearly anywhere in the us for an additional 382.50. these prices include taxes. this is an important conference for forest activists, trade activists, biotech activists, and indigenous people. "We are writing the constitution of a single global economy" - former WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero "There is no substance to the dreams of homo economicus fantasies of salvation at the hands of the technicians of either consumption or production. The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of closure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational as capital." - Iain A. Boal Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment: 24th - 26th November 2000 Tapu Te Ranga Marae Island Bay, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand The Native Forest Network and Native Forest Action (NFA) welcome you to a strategy-focused conference on "free trade" and the corporate pillaging of global forests, to be held in NZ in late November. The "free trade" agenda is a background against which communities and individuals, non government and peoples organisations struggle in all areas of conservation, social justice and indigenous resistance. Our struggles have in common a landscape of capital-sponsored government policy that supports corporate expansionism, privatisation, increased consumption and resource extraction, degradation of the Earth, and greater exploitation of workers (both paid and unpaid). The initiatives promoted at the World Trade Organisation and APEC forums, by government representatives of Chile, New Zealand, and the US for example, are a complex web of unrepresentative and hidden agendas. We must respond not only to the end results of this new wave of enclosure by "corporate rule". We need an understanding of the threats posed by the WTO et al; we need effective networks of opposition and strategic linkages; and we need to respond in solidarity across lines of social justice, Earth advocacy and indigenous struggle. Frontier, old growth forests - the largest intact forest ecosystems in the world - are directly threatened by the liberalisation of trade and investment. The complexity and pace of corporate expansion requires an informed and co-ordinated response. For this reason, the Native Forest Network is holding it's Third International Temperate Forest Conference, in conjunction with the Aotearoa-based ENGO Native Forest Action, as a gathering of international campaigners and activists for a 3 day strategy session; Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment, in Wellington, NZ, 24th - 26th November 2000. What does "free trade" mean for conservation and forests? "Economic Globalisation is the unprecedented, worldwide integration of all national economies into a single market for goods, capital, technology, information and, in many ways, labor." - Victor Menotti (IFG) The three main institutions of the global economy are the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. The WTO sets the agenda for the new global rules of trade, while the IMF and World Bank use financial leverage to "encourage" nations to abide by these rules (e.g. trade sanctions). The bottom line is corporate freedom, to make as much profit as possible without the hindrances of in-country labour or environment laws, and without taking into account indigenous sovereignty issues. The WTO is, in effect, an unelected "government" for the benefit of trans-national corporations. The major international donors to developing countries (World Bank, Japan, the EU, France, Germany, Great Britain, the US) all now have programs which claim to promote responsible resource management and forest conservation. However, the main policies of the international trade forums such as APEC and the WTO seek to increase government revenue from primary resource extraction, increasing exports, cutback on public spending, and minimise foreign investment controls. It is obvious that behind the rhetoric, NGO and community concerns will be overshadowed by the promotion of logging, mining and unsustainable agriculture as key sources of "economic growth". Governments consistently fail to consult or inform the citizens and communities who will be directly effected by trade and investment liberalisation. Many organisations and individuals have rejected the WTO outright, as seen by the show of opposition at the WTO meeting in Seattle November 1999. Many believe the global capitalist model, based on "economic growth" and profit at the expense of the Earth and people, cannot be "reformed". How this informs global and local conservation initiatives requires attention. The agenda of the WTO threatens communities and ecosystems by: 1). Shifting power from local to global institutions through trade rules; 2). Shifting power from local to global institutions through proposed investment rules; 3). Increasing wasteful consumption; 4). Opening the door to invasive species and genetically modified organisms; 5). Enforcing monopoly controls over genetic resources; 6). Intensifying the conversion of forests to agriculture; 7). Weakening existing environmental protections; 8). Blocking new environmental protections; 9). Threatening ecolabeling initiatives; 10). Banning government expenditures for forest conservation. - from "free trade, free logging - how the WTO undermines global forest conservation", by Victor Menotti/International Forum on Globalisation Examples: 1 The Endangered Species Act in the US is being "reimplemented" (i.e. weakened) to conform with WTO rules; 2 In-country subsidies for reaforestation may be forcibly reduced or eliminated as "unfair" to foreign forestry companies; 3 A recent report for APEC outlines "harmful" Non Tariff Measures (NTM), such as border inspections to prevent entry of invasive species, or eco-labelling. These NTM are deemed to be impediments to "free trade" and will be targeted by global trade forums; 4 The WTO agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS) will make it harder for nations to prevent the entry of invasive or undesirable species (including GMO's). The SPS Agreement states that to enforce restrictions on trade on the grounds of bio-security, governments must show that harm has already been done; 5 In-country environmental and employment protections such as log export bans will be outlawed under WTO "agreements" as impediments to "free trade"; 6 Intellectual Property Rights "agreements" (TRIPs) will commodify and commercialise traditional and indigenous knowledge and allow transnational companies to patent such traditional knowledge for their own profit. This will have a direct negative effective on community, culture and the environment; 7 The United States Trade Representative (USTR) have released a study of the Advanced Tariff Liberalisation initiative put forward at the WTO meeting in November 1999. This USTR study predicted that timber harvesting will increase by minimum rates of 0.5% to 11.0% in numerous developing countries. This is deemed to be "good" for the global economy, but will increase deforestation rates for the profit of transnational logging companies. "The truth is that, as I discovered, Neoliberalism is the Chaotic theory of economic chaos, the stupid exaltation of social stupidity, and the catastrophic political management of catastrophe." - Don Durito of the Lacandon, Mexico, 1995 Local forests - Global trade Forest campaigns are by nature global. For example, the corporate lobby for the Free Trade Americas "agreement" and the concurrent influx of transnational logging giants Trillium/Savia, Boise Cascade, or International Paper into Southern Chile or Argentina has much in common with corporate expansion into the South Pacific and the agenda of the APEC forum. And as Noam Chomksy noted, "...a vast component of "trade" consists of centrally managed intra-firm transactions...". This certainly applies to wood and pulp flows around the world. A further widespread element of the "free trade" agenda is the direct and flow-on effects that this has to indigenous peoples. Throughout the world forest clearance is a component of continuing genocide and displacement of indigenous communities. Likewise, sovereignty and self determination of indigenous peoples are further threatened by the new wave of imperialism that is the WTO or APEC. Understanding and solidarity with these struggles needs to be the bottom line, not just a component or consideration of environmental campaigning in both the North and South. Agenda: This gathering will be strategy and network focused, sharing campaign experience and establishing better co-ordination our efforts against economic globalisation. This conference will be for campaigners active on environmental, indigenous and social justice/"free trade" issues, as there are many overlapping areas of campaign interest, but native forest campaigns will be the primary focus. Agenda items will be workshopped for strategy outcomes and potential campaign links. Participants are invited to have input to the agenda and to submit abstracts from a paper/topic they wish to present. Agenda items will include: 1 WTO and trade agreements in general; 2 Tariff Liberalisation; 3 Non Tariff Measures; 4 Corporate expansion into the South; 5 Corporate profiles eg Timberlands West Coast in New Zealand and Trillium in Tiera del Fuego; 6 Threats to indigenous sovereignty and community by trade liberalisation, and indigenous responses; 7 TRIPs and Intellectual property rights; 8 GE trees, Plantations and Carbon Credits; 9 Biosecurity issues of liberalised trade; 10 Alternative economic instruments, e.g. ecolabelling; Venue and costs: Tapu Te Ranga Marae will be the venue for the gathering from Friday morning until Sunday night. Vegetarian and Vegan meals are included in registration. Costs will be $90 per person (individual, NGO's, union), and $300 for business reps. Field Trips (in Aotearoa/NZ & Australia): Following the conference in Wellington there will be guided field trips in Gondwana-remnant, old growth forests of the South Island/ Te Wai Pounamu. These field trips will be from Tuesday the 28th November until the morning of Friday 1st December. In conjunction with this conference and field trips, Gondwana forest campaigners in Tasmania will be hosting a 3-4 day field trip in Tasmanian forests and wild areas. This is being made available to all those conference participants travelling to NZ from abroad, should they wish to return via Australia. This Tasmanian field trip is also open to any campaigners from NZ or Australia. Full details of the field trips, including costs and itinerary will be posted on the conference webpage; http://www.nfa.org.nz/hui Registration: Fill out the Expression of Interest form on the back and post or email it to us. Registration forms will be posted or emailed to you, or will be available on the conference website www.nfa.org.nz/hui NFA and NFN logo's "--------------------------------------------------------------------- Expression of Interest Form: Please fill in and post or email to: NFN Aotearoa/NZ, PO Box 2771, Christchruch Central, Aotearoa New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.nfa.org.nz/hui Name__________________________________________ Organisation or business__________________________________________________ I wish to attend the conference Protecting Global Forests within a World Trade Environment, in Wellington, NZ, 24th - 26th November 2000. I would like to receive registration details: Via post [ ] Via email [ ] OR I will use the registration on the conference website [ ] I would like to present a paper or agenda item to this conference [ ] please visit http://www.nativeforest.org live simply ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNINTENDED RECIPIENTS - This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. Any other distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. 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