Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Civil society participation in trade policy-making
in Latin America: the case of the environmental
movement
Peter Newell
Introduction
The challenge of civil society participation in trade policy has risen to prominence for a
series of complex, but interrelated, reasons. First, involving civil society actors in eco-
nomic policy can be seen as a legitimating exercise in the face of powerful critiques about
the secrecy in which key decisions regarding trade and investment get taken. Crucial to
public trust is evidence that governments' policies re
ect a careful consideration of issues
including non-economic social and environmental concerns, and are not merely designed
to serve special interests. Institutionalized public participation is seen as an important
vehicle by which states can defend their claims to represent a broad notion of the public
interest.
Instrumentally, an informed public and open debate can help to raise key issues and
participation can allow for more complete information and priority-setting and therefore
better-quality decision-making. Civil society organizations can inject new ideas and spe-
cialized expertise, and lend technical support to delegations lacking capacity. Perhaps
most crucially, the involvement of civil society can help to
fl
build public support for the trade agreement that emerges. By engaging their parliaments and
the public in the formulation of national trade policy objectives, trade negotiators can develop
trade initiatives with a clear sense of the standards and benchmarks which legislators and the
public expect them to meet, (Fisher, p. 2002 191)
This also makes it more likely that civil society groups will provide much-needed support
to get accords through national parliaments, as well as help to monitor the implementa-
tion of agreements. Conversely, their exclusion undermines support for trade agreements.
The Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) has claimed as one of its mobilizing rationales
in this regard 'the desire to stop being merely spectators in a game that a
ects all our lives
but is played only by people with the power and money, to determine our own destiny'
(Púlsar, 2001, my translation).
Added to these generic challenges, there are speci
ff
c challenges for Latin America. In
large parts of the region, democratic processes remain, in historical terms, relatively new.
In particular, there is a long history of confrontation between civil society and the state
in Latin America. At an institutional and regional level, the challenge of participation in
trade policy is also a relatively new one, despite the existence of mechanisms for consul-
tation with business and labour within the Andean Pact, for example (Botto and Tussie,
2003, p. 31). There is a strong sense, however, in which NAFTA de
fi
nitively broke with
previous models of thinking about participation in trade policy in the region.The FTAA
(Free Trade Area of The Americas) opens up the possibility of extending this change
fi
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