The Environment and Free Trade: Solutions

In my post yesterday, I gave an overview of how free trade and the WTO are creating international policies that are ultimately destructive to the environment.Corporations use the rights extended to them through the WTO to abuse the environment in less developed countries, gain excess  to and carelessly use world resources, and destroy local economies in their quest to maximize profit.

If we choose to be environmental stewards, I feel it is our responsibility to find solutions to these problems. I am going to address this from two sides: first how current policy can be changed to reduce the environmental damage being wrought and how we as individuals can make decisions that reflect a environmental responsibility. It goes without saying that if we seriously want to find answers to these problems, we will need to take it on from these two different angles.

Rewriting the Rules of Free Trade

International trade laws are very complicated stuff. That being said, I want to clarify that I myself am no policy wonk. The ideas I am presenting in this section I am borrowing from the journal Environmental Ethics in an article by Nicole Hassoun in which she lays out some basic ideas on how things can be changed.

As it stands, the WTO currently has few regulations on the environment, presumably because such regulations would interfere with corporate interests. So for a healthy start, the WTO should consider forcing countries profiting from free trade to compensate for the environmental destruction they impose on other countries. The example Hassoun uses  in her article is corporations might be required to plant new trees to make up for the pollutions they cause in using large amounts of energy in transporting their goods all around the world. Such initiatives as this would force corporation to think twice about how they use their energy and ultimately become more efficient in how they do it.

Another reform would be for the WTO to require companies to start labeling where their products are coming from and under what means they were procured. When the consumer is aware of the whereabouts of their product, they are more likely to factor that in their decision making. Requiring companies to label genetically modified food is an example of how a long overdue policy lapse might change its prominent use around the globe.

The WTO could also construct trade barriers if the environmental cost outweighs the economic benefit. So for example, if we wanted reduce the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, the WTO could impose a tax on all wood coming from that location, forcing corporations to re-examine where they get their resources and how much they use. This serves as a more radical and less plausible solution, but one certainly to be considered.

Individual Choice in a Complicate World

While our ability to change WTO policy is relatively small, we certainly have vast control over our own decisions. And just as policy change on a global level will take political willpower and resolve, on a personal level it takes the same level of dedication to change how we do business at home.

The first and most important step in not supporting the free trade movement is going local. While hearing someone else tell you to go local can become redundant, its importance cannot be overstated. The WTO looks to take economies away from a local and sustainable model, so it is up to us consumer to push back and demand more local products.

Cynthia wrote a post on Thursday on how she went local and joined a delivery project that brought fresh food right to her door step. Food is definitely the place to start: it is easier to find out where we get our food and there are many great websites out there that can guide one through the process. Since food is the source of our nourishment and the resource we cannot live without, it is important to start here.

From there, one should start supporting an economy of local businesses instead of national ones. Try going out to eat at a local family diner instead of Chili’s. By garden tools at a hole in the wall hardware store instead of Lowes. Shopping locally takes your money out of big and powerful corporate chains that are more than likely more intertwined in the global economy then local businesses. It is a return to simplicity in an otherwise very complicated world.

Of course, it is impossible to buy everything local. People have always traded to meet their needs and now is no different. But there are many great programs, such as Fair Trade and Sustainable Forestry Initiative, that help the  consumer make the most ethical decisions possible when buying products from distant lands. I encourage you to check some of these out and consider them in future decisions.