Action Briefing Feb 2003 - Mar 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

GATS Out Of Hell

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is being negotiated in secret. Public services are threatened. Big business stands to gain more control over even more aspects of our daily lives - and the UK Government is in full support.

GATS is an international trade agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that would establish rules governing cross-border trade in services for WTO member countries. This is supposed to make it easier for services (such as schools, hospitals, post offices, sewage treatment, water supplies and power generation) and service providers to move from one country to another. Decisions to open up services are likely to be irreversible, regardless of economic or environmental changes. Failure of any WTO member to adhere to GATS rules would open them up to dispute settlement proceedings, or even a trade war with sanctions.

Susan George, How GATS Could Affect Your Life

What will GATS mean for . . .

Public Services?
Unless carefully regulated, liberalisation of trade in services will severely affect communities in several ways including: loss or higher costs of essential public services such as water and sewerage; higher public transport charges; mass tourism and the associated environmental and social impacts; local environments used as waste dumping grounds; and loss of ability to redress through regulation adverse social and environmental impacts.

Conservation?
Environmental protection is not presently excluded from GATS meaning that governments will be unable to adopt laws and regulations that protect the environment if such laws at all impact on foreign service providers. This regulatory hurdle could have a "chill" effect of making countries neglect environmental protection in order to avoid a dispute with the WTO.

Energy?
GATS rules will make it even harder to adopt and enforce environmental and natural resource protection in this sector. Governments will lose their ability to regulate foreign energy corporations in their own territories and to regulate their electricity or natural gas distribution.

Environmental services?
GATS will mean expanded multinational operations in such environmentally harmful activities as waste incineration and reduce countries ability to develop environmentally beneficial technologies.

Water?
GATS would require countries to open their water collection and distribution to private firms and limit governments' rights to restrict and regulate quantities of water collected from lakes, rivers and groundwater sources by private service operators. The increased pressure on water sources could mean sustained environmental damage.

Tourism?
GATS will prohibit countries from protecting sensitive habitats and regulating their use. Setting limits on the number of excursions into sensitive areas or establishing site protection for eco-tourism would become illegal.

Transport?
Liberalising transport services, particularly in tandem with increased trade flows in goods, will increase transport operations leading to more environmentally-harmful emissions. Countries may find themselves forced to allow access to cross-border road transport even when the vehicles produce greater emissions than domestic policies permit. Market access commitments could force unlimited access to ports for ships, potentially worsening coastal pollution and port dredging. GATS may also constrain environmental protection efforts in the transport sector.

Professional lobby organisations representing service industries in the EU and USA are pushing hard for further GATS liberalisation. Such groups have enormous influence and access to high-ranking politicians. What's more, the negotiating time frame is tight and the WTO currently lacks any democratic mechanisms to allow those most likely to be affected by GATS to have a say.

On a more optimistic note, the last time something like GATS was attempted, in the form of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), hundreds of organisations and thousands of people all over the world fought together and defeated it. There are huge vested interests lobbying hard for GATS - but we can be just as strong in our call for change.

More Information
GATSWatch at www.gatswatch.org; World Development Movement at www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns/GATS.htm; People & Planet's GATS site at www.peopleandplanet.org/tradejustice/; The WTO website www.wto.org

Take Action
GATS is too secretive, undemocratic and vulnerable to abuse by big business. Put this view to the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) consultation team by visiting www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/global_trade/press_for_change/gats/index.html. Watch out for a for a European-wide GATS day of action on 13th March 2003 - plans are afoot in Birmingham FoE for a "World Sell-Off" (services being flogged cheap out of the back of a van by dodgy salesmen and prominent "For Sale/Sold" signs on Birmingham's public landmarks).

James Botham