Can Free Trade affect Our Environment?
“Some countries have given full play to businessmen and they are free to exploit nature as they like. ”
Environmentalists are quite a worried lot these days. They are of the opinion that various free trade treaties that are being formulated in different parts of the world would lead to deteriorating environment standards. Let’s find out how far is their contention true.Actually, the scenario is that certain parts of the world are not able to compete with other players in the market. One of the prominent reasons for this is that some countries have given full play to businessmen and they are free to exploit nature as they deem fit. This has been done to boost the economy in these countries.
On the other hand, some countries or even certain parts within the same country have to face strict rules and regulations while dealing with environment and nature. These people naturally feel at a loss.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you make a product with an environment friendly process. Your rival makes the same product using an environment costly process. According to GAAT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) no discrimination should be made in the two products at the international level.
It’s common sense that environment friendly processes are often costly and when those products that are the result of environment costly processes compete with the products made in the first way, certain companies are bound to suffer losses.
This is the reason that business people often keep on demanding the relaxation of rules regarding exploitation of nature. They want their trade to be free. Here, it seems that these businessmen also have got a point.
There is also a tendency in big companies to shift their business processes to those countries where the environment laws are not that strict. These countries are primarily those that have enormous natural resources but don’t have the potential to make use of them and hence are poor.
Such a trend has led to destruction of environment in these countries at an alarming rate much to the chagrin of the environmentalists. But, since world economic bodies like GAAT and WTO don’t seem inclined to incorporate environmental policies, it’s the strength of the pressure groups only that can persuade their respective governments to stop this environment killing.
Environmentalists are right. There should be sustainable exploitation of natural resources.
Author - DeeKay
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