PIC, POPs and the MAI apocalypse: our environmental future as a function of investors' rights and chemical management initiatives.

I. INTRODUCTION

An increase in the environmentally destructive capabilities of humankind can be quite vividly linked with the development of the corporate form. Recently, however, these legal entities have grown and developed into multi-national giants, which have begun to assume tremendous political and economic power.

In the 1990s large business enterprises, even some smaller ones, have the

technological means and strategic vision to burst old limits--of time,

space, national boundaries, language, custom, and ideology. By acquiring

earth-spanning technologies, by developing products that can be produced

anywhere and sold everywhere, by spreading credit around the world, and by

connecting global channels of communication that can penetrate any village

or neighborhood, these institutions we normally think of as economic rather

than political, private rather than public, are becoming the world empires

of the twenty-first century.(1)

While some industrial sectors have more potential for environmental harm than others, the chemical industry would be at the top of such a list. Its destructive acts have been researched back to the mid-1800s in relation to aniline dye manufacturers,(2) and it has also been immortalized in literature. Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, exposed the dangerous use of Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane (DDT) in 1962.(3)

International environmental attention has recently focused on the dangers of allowing certain chemicals and pesticides to continue to be utilized in a predominately unregulated fashion. To this end, two draft conventions on Prior Informed Consent (PIC)(4) and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)(5) have been initiated. However, a new Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)(6) will likely liberalize and internationalize the capitalist market economy and thereby serve to undermine any benefits which would have been gained by the PIC and POPs conventions. It is through an examination of chemical use, the chemical industry, the negotiating processes, and draft conventions that the potential fate of the global environment is revealed.

II. CONTEXTUALIZING THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

A glance through magazine advertisements demonstrates that the world has become a place of startling anthropocentric contrasts. Contrast an advertisement for Elf Autochem, a French chemical manufacturer, containing a slogan to promote bromine derivatives stating, "There are faster routes to building your molecules!"(7) with an advertisement for a "Chemical-Free Christmas Tree" to "[p]rotect your own health."(8) What the Elf Autochem advertisement fails to state is that the chemicals they manufacture can be deadly. Methyl bromide is a pesticide produced by Elf Autochem(9) and is most commonly used as a soil fumigant,(10) This product has been characterized as the "`almost perfect pesticide"' because "[w]ith one application you can kill weeds, insects, rodents ... you name it." (11) The unstated disadvantage is that

[t]he features which make methyl bromide "almost the perfect

pesticide"--its high toxicity to pests and its ability to penetrate

fumigated substances--also increases its toxicity to humans. Exposure to

methyl bromide can cause acute damage to the central nervous system, lungs,

kidneys, eyes and skin. In their "risk assessment" research, scientists

have not found a dose of methyl bromide low enough for them to deem

"safe".(12)

Furthermore, since 1992 methyl bromide has been listed as an ozone depleter under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. (13)

This is the reality of the world in which we live. One in which the benefits of chemical use, whether for agricultural production or vector-borne disease control, has distorted our perception of what these chemicals are--poison. In short, the "miracles" of chemical use have helped to reinvent our perception of nature so that what we used to describe and enjoy as nature has been reduced to "environment."

Nature, when she becomes the object of politics and planning, turns into

`environment'. It is misleading to use the two concepts interchangeably for

it impedes the recognition of `environment' as a particular construction of

`nature' specific to our epoch. Contrary to its connotations we are

currently being socialized into accepting, there has rarely been a concept

that represented nature in a form more abstract, passive, and void of

qualities than `environment'.... Sticking the label `environment' on the

natural world makes ... nature appear passive and lifeless, merely waiting

to be acted upon. (14)

The benefits of such an environmental construction ultimately flow to chemical industry shareholders, while the burdens flow to an often unsuspecting public. For example, in April 1997, Denmark's Environmental Protection Agency suggested that flexible PVC toys be withdrawn from the market due to the potential for negative toxic effects on babies from the phthalates found in PVC.(15) The Danish EPA concluded that up to seventy percent of phthalates in plastic could be released,(16) and therefore the Danish government is preparing legislation to ban the use of phthalates in products used by small children.(17)

Burdens of risk are also carried by agricultural workers, especially in developing countries, for whom exposure to chemicals has become a daily reality. One example can be found in relation to the production of bananas. Pesticides such as Chlorotlalonil, Dithane, and DBCP are used to protect bananas which are exported to developed countries.(18) The result of pesticide exposure for some workers has been sterility.(19) Their living conditions also bear the unsavory mark of exposure. "Pervasive is the sweet-and-sour stench of decaying banana stems and pesticide fallout.... More bothersome but less frequent are the burning clouds of Chlorotlalonil and Dithane spray, dropped from small airplanes over entire plantations on a biweekly basis to control the spread of the leaf fungus Black Sigatoka."(20)

While a new strain of banana promises to break free from chemical dependency,(21) developing economies in general will not. Not until foreign debts are forgiven(22) or cash crops are no longer required to pay foreign debt will developing countries be capable of becoming chemical-free.

Developed countries are also not immune to the effects of pesticide use, and consumers located in these countries are beginning to realize that imported produce may contain more than they expected. Some stores concerned about the presence of pesticide residues in produce test for its presence and then market produce as being "clean" "as if a commercially grown vegetable that is safe to eat were a horticultural phenomenon."(23) Part of the motivation for this testing has come from a finding that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only tests approximately one percent of all of the country's fresh food, whether grown nationally or imported, and finds excessive residues in two to five percent of these samples.(24)

In light of its citizens' growing concern over environmental matters, the United States, under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act,(25) has developed the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).(26) TRI acts as a pollutant accounting system that requires industrial plants to disclose yearly levels of pollutants "discharged into the air, water, and land or transferred to other sites for incineration, recycling, and disposal."(27) Opposition to the TRI primarily results from concerns regarding confidentiality and the human resource burden of compliance.(28)

Another initiative developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an on-line database called "Envirofacts" that provides accessible information about a company's emissions records, its pollutant types, and related risk information.(29) Companies have not been supportive of this initiative fearing that the data, although not confidential, will expose them to toxic tort suits or citizen-initiated suits to enforce environmental laws.(30)

A. The Chemical Industry Perspective

While consumers and governments may question the need for chemical residues in produce, the chemical industry itself is bravely moving into the next century, prepared to expand and increase its share of world profits. In the article Global Chemical Outlook Bright, economists forecasted a "rosy" future for U. S. chemical manufacturers as they increased their business in foreign markets.(31) The chemical manufacturers' eagerness to invest in developing countries resulted from liberalized trade policies, majority ownership positions, and the ability to take their profits home.(32) Industry saw this expansion as a benefit to developing countries and asked governments worldwide "not to fear large companies like DuPont, but instead to embrace them."(33) "Large companies such as DuPont have the global reach, the research, and the financial strength to make the technological transitions that.... are ahead of us."(34)

DuPont is unafraid of foreign investment as it expects to double its business in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa from the 1997 amount of US$650 million to US$1.4 billion by the year 2000.(35)