Pacific island countries urged to ‘Walk away from PACER-Plus agreement’ [1]
Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - 22:58. Updated on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 16:28.
PACER-Plus trade talks may lead to serious implications for Pacific island countries with a range of concerns raised on gender, health, food and national sovereignty, states a report commissioned by the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG).
PANG Coordinator, Maureen Penjueli says the assessment was based on leaked negotiating text and “warns of the very serious implications that PACER-Plus poses to island countries in the region.”
“We’re only just scratching the surface on assessing the social impacts of PACER-Plus and already it shows how bad it can be if adopted in its current form. These are warning signs and Pacific governments need to heed them and stop walking down this path,” she said.
“When negotiations were launched they were sold as being a development agreement but instead we’re seeing Australia and New Zealand aggressively advancing their strategic political and economic interests at the expense of the Pacific’s right to determine its own development,” she said.
Leading academics in Fiji, New Zealand and Australia assessed PACER-Plus independently with each finding issues with the agreement.
University of Auckland, Professor Jane Kelsey, says the services and investment chapters of PACER-Plus are highly controversial and that a growing number of countries withdraw from investment agreements like this and develop “substitutes that balance commercial interests with regulatory sovereignty and social rights”.
Dr Jagjit Plahe and Mr Wendell Cornwall from Monash University said that PACER-Plus would limit the capacity of Pacific nations to “protect, respect and fulfill the right to food” and that the Pacific would not be able to use tariffs to protect their citizens from exposure to unhealthy goods nor their local producers, processors and exporters against dumping.
Dr Deborah Gleeson from La Trobe University said that a range of risks to health seem to “outweigh the small prospects of health benefits arising from the agreement”.
Dr Claire Slatter from the University of the South Pacific critiqued the Social Impact Assessment of the Office of the Chief Trade Adviser (OCTA) finding it technically flawed and that it failed to adequately address the gendered impacts of PACER-Plus.
Ms Penjueli said that the report shows how PACER-Plus will negatively affect women, worsen health outcomes, undermine food sovereignty and restrict what governments can do in defence of national development interest.
“The findings directly challenge the Office of the Chief Trade Advisers (OCTA) Social Impact Assessment and demonstrate just how biased and poorly advised our country negotiators are, glossing over the potential impacts whilst exaggerating benefits.”
“PACER-Plus should not proceed one step further until there is complete release of all negotiating materials especially country level schedules so we can gather a full picture of what each country is committing,” she said.
The report provides an alternative assessment of the PACER-Plus agreement to Pacific governments, negotiators, parliamentarians, civil society actors, customary landowners and the private sector in the Pacific.