The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should not substitute corporate preferences for democratically enacted policies that promote clean air and water. The TPP is likely to do this through the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. Foreign investors have repeatedly used this “right” to challenge environmental protections around the world.
In one egregious example, Chevron used the investor-state system to evade an Ecuadorian court’s verdict of $18 billion for dumping and failing to clean up toxic oil waste that contaminated the indigenous Lago Agrio community’s drinking water source, which caused numerous health problems for the community. In February 2012, an unaccountable, undemocratic arbitration tribunal ordered the Ecuadorian court to halt the enforcement of its own ruling.
Indeed, numerous cases occurred after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. A case in point, a Mexican municipality denied the Metalclad Corp., an American company, a permit to build a toxic waste dump due to concerns it would contaminate a nearby drinking water source. The tribunal ordered Mexico to pay Metalclad more than $15 million for its refusal. The TPP must avoid these past mistakes.
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