An Environmental Justice Critique of Comparative Advantage: Indigenous Peoples, Trade Policy, and the Mexican Neoliberal Economic Reforms

The free market reforms adopted by Mexico in the wake of the debt crisis of the 1980s and in connection with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have jeopardized the physical and cultural survival of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, increased migration to the United States, threatened biological diversity in Mexico, and imposed additional stress on the environment in the United States. Despite these negative impacts, NAFTA continues to serve as a template for trade agreements in the Americas. Unless this template is fundamentally restructured, future trade agreements may replicate throughout the Western hemisphere many of the economic, ecological and social dislocations experienced under NAFTA. Using Mexico as a case study, the article examines the impact of trade liberalization on indigenous peoples and on the environment. Critiquing Mexico\u27s neoliberal economic reforms through the framework of environmental justice, the article highlights some of the theoretical and practical limitations of the theory of comparative advantage, which serves as the justification for the free market economic policies promoted by international trade and financial institutions. The article urges policy-makers to integrate trade, human rights, and environmental policy instead of criminalizing immigrants or militarizing the U.S.-Mexican border. The article concludes by using the paradigm of environmental justice to outline the elements of a more equitable and sustainable approach to international trade law and policy that supports the livelihoods of indigenous and rural communities and protects the planet\u27s finite natural resources

Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique of Free Trade

The article contributes to the trade and environment literature by assessing the claim that industrialized country proposals to integrate environmental protection into the WTO trade regime constitute environmental imperialism - the imposition of industrialized country values and preferences on less powerful nations. This claim is usually based on two distinct premises. The first is that environmental protection is a luxury that poor countries can ill afford. The second is that wealthy countries have played a leadership role in the protection of the global environment. The article questions these assumptions. It argues that environmental protection is essential to well-being of the poor, and that wealthy countries have achieved economic prosperity by shifting environmental degradation to the global commons and to the developing world. The article re-defines environmental imperialism as the over-utilization of the world\u27s limited pool of natural resources and waste sinks. It concludes that the industrialized world has indeed engaged in environmental imperialism and that trade liberalization threatens to accelerate this process. Developing countries are therefore justified in asserting that environmental trade restrictions are hypocritical in light of developed countries\u27 failure to address their own far more ecologically damaging behavior. The article proposes several legal strategies designed to scale back industrialized countries\u27 over-consumption of the world\u27s resources and to support grassroots resistance to environmental degradation. The article calls for close scrutiny of proposals to reconcile trade and environment to make sure that they promote environmental justice and do not merely reinforce industrialized countries\u27 economic and political dominance

Trade Liberalization, Food Security and the Environment: The Neoliberal Threat to Sustainable Rural Development

This article examines the historic and contemporary roots of chronic malnutrition and environmental degradation in the developing world. It chronicles the patterns of trade and production that contribute to this problem from the colonial period until the present, and analyzes the role of contemporary trade, aid and development practices in ameliorating or exacerbating the problem. The article argues that the neoliberal economic reforms imposed on developing countries through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) exacerbate hunger and environmental degradation by reinforcing pre-existing inequities in the global trading system that relegate many developing countries to the export of primary agricultural commodities as a means of generating the revenue with which to purchase food and manufactured goods. This economic specialization erodes food security by depressing domestic food production and by subjecting the export earnings needed to finance the import of food and other necessities to fluctuating world market prices for agricultural commodities and to the declining terms of trade for agricultural products. This economic specialization also degrades the environment by replacing biodiverse agroecosystems with monocultures that require massive application of pesticides and fertilizers. Furthermore, the structural adjustment policies of the IMF and World Bank, in conjunction with the reforms required under the WTO, have created a double standard in international agricultural trade that requires relative market openness in the developing world while permitting lavish subsidies and import-restrictive tariffs in industrialized countries. This double standard has depressed the export earnings of developing countries and has resulted in the widespread pauperization of small farmers in the developing world due to the influx of cheap subsidized food from developed countries. The article concludes with several recommendations designed to promote food security and sustainable rural development

The Global Politics of Food: Introduction to the Theoretical Perspectives Cluster

In May 2010, the Universidad Interamericana in Mexico City hosted an international conference on The Global Politics of Food: Sustainability and Subordination. Sponsored by Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc. and by Seattle University School of Law, the conference took place under the auspices of the South-North Exchange on Theory, Culture and Law (SNX), a yearly gathering of scholars in the Americas that seeks to foster transnational, cross-disciplinary and inter-cultural dialogue on current issues in law, theory and culture. Published in the University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, the conference papers examine the complex ways in which the global food system reinforces hierarchies of power and privilege. This Introduction situates the essays collected in the theoretical perspectives cluster within the parameters of LatCrit and outsider jurisprudence, and explains how these essays contribute to our understanding of the role of food policy in perpetuating the subordination of marginalized populations on a global scale. The Introduction also discusses the growing food sovereignty and food justice movements, and the importance of integrating the insights of these movements into the broader critique of neoliberal globalization

Environmental Racism, American Exceptionalism, and Cold War Human Rights

Environmental justice scholars and activists coined the terms “environmental racism” to describe the disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards in neighborhoods populated by racial and ethnic minorities. Having exhausted domestic legal remedies (or having concluded that these remedies are unavailable), communities of color in the United States are increasingly turning to international human rights law and institutions to challenge environmental racism. However, the United States has ratified only a handful of human rights treaties, and has limited the domestic application of these treaties through reservations and declarations that preclude judicial enforcement in the absence of implementing legislation. Indeed, the U.S. has generally resisted scrutiny of its human rights record by domestic or international institutions on the basis of “American exceptionalism” -- the belief that the U.S. is unique in its commitment to freedom and equality and provides more robust protection of human rights than international law. What historical events triggered this resistance to international human rights law? What are the implications for human rights-based approaches to environmental protection? This article explains how the struggle for racial justice in the United States at the height of the Cold War shaped U.S. attitudes to international human rights law. Using Mossville Environmental Action Now v. United States as a case study (currently pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights), the article argues that international human rights law is far superior to U.S. domestic law as a means of addressing environmental injustice. However, its utility is constrained by legal doctrines developed over time but reinforced during the Cold War that restrict the enforcement of international human rights law in U.S. courts. Nevertheless, a victory for the Mossville petitioners would be immensely useful as part of a larger strategy to name and shame the United States, to bridge the gap between international law and domestic law, and to educate government officials and the public at large about the relationship between environmental protection and human rights

The Global Food Crisis: Law, Policy and the Elusive Quest for Justice

The food crisis of 2008, the subsequent financial crisis, and the ongoing climate crisis have created new challenges to the attainment of global food security. This essay examines the historic and current practices that have contributed to food insecurity in developing countries, and recommends several steps that the international community might take to promote the fundamental human right to food. The essay begins by outlining the trade and aid policies that laid the foundation for food insecurity in the global South from colonialism until the early twenty-first century. It then examines the impact of the financial crisis and the climate crisis on food security – including speculative “bubbles” in agricultural commodity markets, the biofuels boom, and the growing number of “land grabs” (long-term leases or purchases of agricultural lands) by foreign investors in developing countries. The essay concludes by suggesting specific measures that the international community might take to promote food security through international law and regulation