What is DR-CAFTA?
The
Dominican Republic-Central America Free
Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) is a "free" trade agreement that includes
the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Honduras and Costa
Rica, and the Dominican Republic.
DR-CAFTA
is a stepping stone to the Bush administration’s plans to expand the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the rest of the Western
Hemisphere. . NAFTA has
been a disaster for animals in Canada,
the United States, and Mexico. As a direct result of NAFTA, destruction of
animal forest habitat has increased in Mexico,
a Canadian law against imports of dogs from cruel US
puppy mills was severely weakened, consumption of animal flesh significantly
expanded in Mexico, and US law
protecting the killing of dolphins in tuna nets was challenged.
Ratified
by Congress in July 2005, and currently ratified in the Dominican Republic,
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salavador, and Nicaragua (Costa Rica hasn’t ratified.),
DR-CAFTA will follow NAFTA in increasing animal suffering and death, while also
endangering human health, and the environment.
* Expanded cruelty to
farmed animals: - DR-CAFTA will over time eliminate import tariffs
that keep prices high on US
meat, dairy, and egg products in Central America and the Dominican Republic. This will allow industrial style, factory
farmed animal products, which can
produced more cheaply, to flood the market in these countries,
driving local producers using traditional agriculture methods
our of business—or forcing them
to switch to factory farming in order to stay competitive. Factory farms, which
intensively confine animals in
filth and squalor, are widely viewed as
inhumane.
* Public health in Latin America at risk US agribusiness interests view DR-CAFTA as an
opportunity to dramatically increase consumption of animal products in Latin America
by making cheap meat products more available.
While this may be profitable, it will be a public health disaster for Latin America.
Increased consumption of meat and dairy products in the Caribbean and
Latin America have led to dramatic increases in diabetes and heart disease
rates, with experts predicting that 62% of global diabetes will be in these
regions by 2025. DR-CAFTA will hasten this trend.
* More factory farms mean degraded water quality in US
and DR-CAFTA countries. Environmentalists consider hog and poultry
factory farms to be one of the most significant sources of water
contamination. As the US seeks to
supply more of the market for animal products in DR-CAFTA countries, factory
farming will expand domestically, putting more communities at risk of being
sites for polluting factory farms. As
producers in DR-CAFTA countries shift towards factory farming to stay
competitive, the impact will be more dire, as many regions in these countries
lack adequate facilities for water filtration.
* Expanded damage to rangelands Increased beef production will lead to the further
degradation of rangelands, including taxpayer subsidized public lands.
* Marine life threatened by expanded fishing As
commercial zones are increased and regulatory controls are undermined under
DR-CAFTA, allowing for larger enterprises to move into areas previously zoned
solely for small fisherman and their use of larger nets,. This destructive
practice not only catches more of the fish, it also sweeps up other species that
have been left alone by small fisherman, like sea turtles.
* Weak environmental protections endanger wildlife DR-CAFTA countries are critical habitat for 1000 bird
species, over 600 species of reptiles and several hundred types of mammals.
Three out of four migratory bird routes in the Western
Hemisphere pass through the CAFTA countries. Of the 836 migratory
bird species that are listed in the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, some 350
neo-tropical migratory species (mainly songbirds) migrate through or are winter
residents of the CAFTA countries. Loss of habitat means starvation and death
for their resident animals, making environmental preservation an animal rights
issue as well as a conservation issue.
*
Corporate investors protected over environment DR-CAFTA’s weak environmental protections, contrasted
with its strong protections for corporate investors, provisions for
corporations to sue countries over natural resource agreements, and ability for
corporations to sue nations for unlimited sums in international tribunals
severely imperils protection of critical wildlife habitat areas.
Harken Energy recently lost a suit in the Costa Rican courts where the
company sued the country for $58 billion (more than three times Costa Rica’s
gross domestic product and eleven times Costa Rica’s annual government budget)
after Costa Rica blocked an offshore drilling project in Costa Rica’s
Caribbean. The project, which included
the environmentally sensitive Talamanca region, would have endangered rare
manatees, over 100 species of fish, mangrove
forests and wetlands, and key breeding areas and nesting beaches for the
hawksbill, great-headed and endangered leatherback and green turtles. Harken had obtained a concession agreement to
drill for oil, contingent on the outcome of an environmental assessment. The
Costa Rican government reviewed the assessment and determined that Harken’s
application for permission to drill was incompatible with the country’s
environmental law.
Harken attempted to bring the dispute before the
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank,
but Costa Rica demanded that the matter be handled in its national courts. If Harken had threatened to bring this suit
to an international tribunal under CAFTA, the threat alone would have forced Costa Rica to
concede and settle, regardless of whether Harken would have been able to
substantiate their case in the end.
* Deforestation
danger Forest
ecosystems in Central America represent
critical and irreplaceable wildlife habitat.
Already experiencing an unprecedented rate of destruction, DR-CAFTA will
hasten the logging of these forests.
Oxfam International has warned that DR-CAFTA may replicate the increased
deforestation that came as a result of US
corn dumping on Mexico. 1.5 million small farmers were driven off
their land. This led to an upsurge in
tree clearing for farming and fuel.
Subsequent to NAFTA’ implementation, the annual rate of deforestation in
Mexico
rose to 1.1 million hectares, practically doubling the pre-NAFTA rate of 600
thousand hectares per year was practically doubled. Under DR-CAFTA this phenomenon is likely to
be repeated with Central America’s rice
farmers. This will also hasten a trend
already seen in El Salvador—as
farmers are forced out of business by cheap agriculture imports, they move to
the cities for work. Forested rural
areas are cleared to open to roads and logged for development. Even the U.S. trade negotiators admit that
DR-CAFTA could contribute to the ‘loss of migratory bird habitat’ through
investments in the agricultural sector.”
Mangrove habitat threatened DR-CAFTA will allow large-scale dumping of imported
shrimp on the US, resulting in increased logging of Central American mangrove
forests to create shrimp farms, destroying refuge and nursery grounds for
juvenile fish, crabs, shrimps, and mollusks, and shelter for birds.
*DR-CAFTA: Stepping Stone to FTAA Worst of all, DR-CAFTA is only the
beginning. The Bush administration intends
for DR-CAFTA to push negotiations towards the proposed Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA). forward faster, by adding extra pressure to countries like
Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina
to either accede to U.S.
demands, or be left out. The FTAA will
expand DR-CAFTA’s detrimental impact over a far larger area, putting billions
of animals at risk.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
* Find out how your Senators
and Congressmembers voted on DR-CAFTA by visiting http://freetradekillsanimals.org/?page=Votes
or by contacting Global Justice for Animals.
If you aren’t sure who represents you in Congress, you can find out by
visiting https://community.hsus.org/humane/leg-lookup/search.html
.
* If your legislators voted
against DR-CAFTA, call them, thank them, and encoruage them to also vote
against the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.
. Request a position statement on
the Peru TPA in writing. Urge your
legislators to sign the Pledge for Trade Justice, and commit to opposing
DR-CAFTA style trade agreements. Learn
more about the pledge at http://stopcafta.org/
* If any of your legislators voted for
DR-CAFTA, call them, tell them that you are disappointed that they voted for
this-anti animal trade agreement , and urge them to not repeat the mistake by
voting for the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.
Request a position statement on the Peru TPA in writing. Urge them to commit to never against
supporting destructive trade agreements
by signing the the Pledge for Trade Justice.
* If your legislators voted for DR-CAFTA, consider
launching an accountability campaign, especially if they have not committed to
opposing the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.
Learn how to run an accountability campaign at http://freetradekillsanimals.org/?page=ElectAccount. To find local allies in this effort, visit http://stopcafta.org/groups.php.
* Support groups in the Dominican Republic and Central
America working to prevent the implementation of DR-CAFTA in their
countries. To learn how you can help,
visit stopcafta.org or contact the local groups listed at
http://stopcafta.org/groups.php
Additional
info on DR-CAFTA:
http://stopcafta.org/
http://citizen.org/trade/cafta/
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cafta/
http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/cafta/
