Activists protest the WTO meeting in Seattle over fears environmental standards will be lowered in favor of more trade

November 29, 1999
Web posted at: 2:37 p.m. EST (1937 GMT)

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SEATTLE (CNN) -- Environmental activists, concerned that this week's World Trade Organization conference will seek to weaken health and environmental safety standards in the pursuit of corporate profits, have been planning for months to disrupt the Seattle gathering. But the 135-nation WTO, which has the power to enforce international trade agreements, insists a global economy benefits everyone.

VIDEO Environmentalists have accused the WTO of weakening international environmental laws. CNN's Don Knapp reports. Windows Media 28K 80K Correspondent Rusty Dornin reports on what protesters are planning for the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     ALSO U.S. help for steel attacked Trade conference may create political headaches for Gore, Clinton Health - Ethics Matters: Seeds of Discontent: Plant Biotech and World Trade     MESSAGE BOARD WTO

"Trade is the ally of working people, not their enemy," WTO Director-General Mike Moore told trade union representatives in advance of the conference, which opens Tuesday. "As living standards improve, so too does education, health, the environment and labor standards."

It's a tough sell. A protest poster slapped on walls near the WTO conference center denounces Moore, a former New Zealand prime minister, as a destroyer of the world's forests and murderer of "countless endangered species."

There were demonstrations over the weekend as 6,000 WTO delegates began arriving in Seattle. Still more protests are planned throughout the week, including a large demonstration being timed to coincide with President Clinton's arrival on Tuesday.

On Monday, Seattle police closed off the Seattle Convention Center to conduct a security sweep after discovering what was described as a "security breach." A door leading into the meeting center had been bent back.

Daniel Seligman of the Sierra Club said it's not trade and the globalized economy that upsets environmentalists, but "the way that World Trade Organization rules work to promote trade."

"The WTO aims to eliminate what they are calling non-tariff trade barriers," Seligman told CNN. "And a lot of those trade barriers are actually hard-won environmental and food safety protections."

"We're hoping President Clinton gets the message that we need to fix these trade rules so that they no longer compromise environmental protections as we go about promoting trade," he said.

The problem with the WTO, the activists say, is the international body's rules, which do not allow one country to ban another country's products because of the way those products are produced or processed.

For example -- a U.S. ban on importing shrimp from countries that don't protect sea turtles was overturned by the WTO after India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand challenged it.

The WTO's critics have already had some success within the United States. Clinton signed an executive order this month requiring U.S. officials to review how market-opening agreements would have an impact on the environment.

The United States appealed to the WTO over a European Union ban on beef treated with growth hormones

It's not just U.S. health and environmental protections at stake. After the European Union banned U.S. beef treated with growth hormones, the United States went to the WTO. The ban was overturned because the EU could not show specific harm caused by hormones.

Such actions worry environmentalists, who argue the WTO favors the growth of trade over public safety.

"People deciding the dispute are trade experts, and the focus is on facilitating trade, and that means when there's another concern, like the environment or human health, trade trumps," said Martin Wagner of EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund.

Such claims are unfounded, said Marino Marcich of the National Association of Manufacturers.

"There is almost no conflict between trade promotion and environmental protection. The U.S. sets whatever level of protection it sees fit," said Marcich.

As Moore put it, "When living standards rise, human rights rise (and) people demand better environmental outcomes."

Environmentalists hope that's true, but they want people -- not profits -- as the WTO's top priority.

Correspondent Don Knapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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