Date: 14 March 2023
Campaigns: Trade

The UK and Canadian trade ministers are meeting today about the Pacific trade deal (CPTPP) which the UK is trying to join and is hoping for a decision on soon. The Pacific trade deal is between eleven countries around the Pacific rim, and is expected to have minimal economic benefit for the UK, but is seen as a political post-Brexit prize by the government. Accession negotiations have been conducted in secret.

The deal is shaping up to have serious concerns for the environment, climate and biodiversity:

• deforestation and impact on wildlife habitat:
  The UK has apparently already agreed to remove trade measures introduced to protect forests from expansion of palm oil plantations in Malaysia. Palm oil plantations are a threat to the survival of orangutan populations in the wild and other biodiversity.
• beef exports and hormone beef:
  The Canadian government is pushing for the UK to increase beef exports to the UK and drop the UK’s ban on hormone beef. Agriculture is already a cause of 42% of deforestation in Canada. Growth hormones are used in industrial cattle farming in countries like Canada and Australia, but have been banned in the UK for more than 30 years on public health grounds.
• fossil fuel companies blocking climate action:
  The Pacific trade deal includes the controversial ISDS mechanism – secret tribunals that fossil fuel companies have recently been using to challenge climate policy around issues such as coal phase-out and fracking bans. The UK government has recognised the risk this poses in other trade deals such as the Energy Charter Treaty and is trying to fix this, yet appears willing to sign up to the same risk all over again in the Pacific trade deal.

Jean Blaylock, campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said:

The Pacific trade deal will be an environmental disaster for the UK. It’s shameful that in these secret trade talks the UK has apparently already agreed to renege on pledges it made as hosts at COP26 in Glasgow to halt and reverse deforestation.

Worryingly, it seems the UK is going to lock itself into the danger of so-called ‘corporate courts’ which fossil fuel companies have been using to sue governments over their climate policies.

Avoiding crucial scrutiny, these talks have been conducted behind closed doors; at present not even our MPs will get a vote on this. For the sake of people and the planet, the government should not join this toxic trade deal.

Notes
The eleven countries in the Pacific trade deal are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

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Photo: Deforestation to make way for oil palm plantations in Borneo, Malaysia. Credit: Jonathan Yee/Shutterstock