What is GATS?
The General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS, is an agreement being
re-negotiated at the World Trade Organizsation to
allow greater access by overseas companies to in-country services. The agreement,
driven by the EU and the USA, would prevent the government from giving services
suppliers from one foreign country better treatment than those from New Zealand
or any other country.
Criticism of the World Trade Organization, which has been widespread since
its creation in 1995, has centred on the ‘free trade’ rules it sets down for
trade in goods and agriculture. However, in many countries, including New
Zealand, services such as education, transport and public utilities are big
business. The global environmental services sector alone is a worth US$280
billion, and is expected to grow to US$640 billion by 2010. The growth of that
sector is directly linked to the privatization of publicly developed services
and utilities.
Under GATS, countries make commitments to “progressively liberalize”
specific services, such as provision of education services, or health services,
or tourism and travel related services. There has been widespread concern and
opposition to existing and potential new GATS commitments, such as from
education and health care providers and workers. It is important that the New
Zealand government does not make commitments on environmental services, either.
We need to speak out against GATS NOW!
What are Environmental
Services?
Sewage, hazardous waste management, refuse collection and treatment,
and pest control services in connection with agriculture are examples of the
environmental services can come under GATS. The New Zealand government has
already made specific commitments on these environmental services in the free
trade agreement it signed with Singapore in 2000, without almost anyone
knowing. So far it hasn’t done the same within GATS, and we must demand that it
doesn’t in future.
Two critical examples of the GATS-related liberalisation of
environmental services are the privatization of water utilities, and the
possible privatization of ‘Nature and Landscape Protection’ (currently the
domain of DoC and others).
Around the world water services – the collection, extraction and
distribution of water – are being privatized. Water is increasingly becoming a
scarce resource, and multinational companies such as Vivendi who are gaining
control over water supplies are profiteering off what should be a free
resource, the essence of life. Such profiteering is creating even further water
scarcity, particularly amongst poor and dispossessed communities, such as in
Bolivia where people took to the streets and fought the privatization of their
water supply, which had resulted in huge price increases.
Under the sort of market access commitments contained in the GATS
agreement, the NZ government would not be able to limit the number of water
companies operating in any part of New Zealand or require them to be joint
ventures with a locally owned or impose ‘unnecessarily burdensome’ regulations
on water treatment. The environmental and social cost of such GATS commitments
would be high, and they would be practically irreversible. Breaking these
commitments would lay the government open to trade sanctions from governments
whose firms claim their interests are affected.
If the New Zealand Government signed commitments under GATS, new local
or central government environmental regulations on licensing and technical
standards could be open to attack as “unnecessary barriers to trade”; other
measures designed to protect the environment or public health could be
challenged as disguised barriers to foreign companies. There is a real risk
that low standards or market-style regulations that operate in one country
could be used as the measuring stick for other countries signed up to GATS.
For example, an overseas company dealing in hazardous waste management
might challenge local environmental laws, saying that such environmental and
health regulations are unnecessarily burdensome to achieve their goal. Under
GATS this dispute could go to the WTO’s infamous undemocratic disputes process,
and NZ authorities may be forced to accept a lower standard of operation by this
company. Should New Zealand’s environmental policy be dictated to by the WTO
and its dispute panels?
GATS Information Resources:
For more information on GATS and New Zealand, go to the ARENA website:
Other on-line GATS resources relating to environment and conservation,
are available from Friends of the Earth (FOE) Australia:
http://www.foe.org.au/nc/nc_trade_GATS.htm
FOE UK has also produced a thorough 6-page briefing on water privatization:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/gats_stealing_water.pdf
Please write to Prime
Minister Helen Clark, and the Ministers
of Conservation and Minister for the Environment, demanding that New Zealand
not make such GATS commitments.
Please take the time to write or email these ministers and the PM to express your concern over GATS. You can also write to your mayor and local councillors, expressing concern about the possible privatization of essential services and utilities, and the undermining of local government that GATS represents.
Helen Clark
Email: pm@ministers.govt.nz
Fax: 04 473 3579
Marian Hobbs, Minister for the Environment
Email: mhobbs@ministers.govt.nz
Fax: 04 495 8467
Chris Carter, Minister of Conservation
Email: ccarter@ministers.govt.nz
Fax: 04 472 8034