Wikileaks has just published a draft of the enviromental chapter of the TPP: It's bad.

[cali]

3. thank you Sam. This is by far and away the most urgent issue

here's another good piece on this from Slate:

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As of now, the draft environmental chapter does not require the nations to follow legally binding environmental provisions or other global environmental treaties. The text notes only, for example, that pollution controls could vary depending on a country’s “domestic circumstances and capabilities.”

In addition, the draft does not contain clear requirements for a ban on shark finning, which is the practice of capturing sharks and cutting off their fins — commonly used in shark-fin soup — and throwing back the sharks to die. The dish is a delicacy in many of the Asian negotiating countries. At this point the draft says that the countries “may include” bans “as appropriate” on such practices.

…“Bilateral negotiations are a very different thing,” said Jennifer Haverkamp, the former head of the United States trade representative’s environmental office. “Here, if the U.S. is the only one pushing for this, it’s a real uphill battle to get others to agree if they don’t like it.”


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The World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council have released their own analysis of the leaked documents, which they say fail meet the standard set by Congress back in 2007, when a bipartisan agreement to include an environmental provision in all American free-trade deals was reached.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/01/15/leaked_tpp_documents_administration_may_give_up_key_environmental_protections/