LAHAINA, Maui — Trade negotiators from the United States and 11 other Pacific nations reached agreement late Thursday on broad environmental protections for some of the most sensitive, diverse and threatened ecosystems on earth, closing one of the most contentious chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
As negotiators struggled to complete the largest regional trade agreement, they pointed to the environmental accord as a clear achievement. It will be controversial. Some environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, insist that it lacks the binding enforcement measures that the Obama administration promised when talks began.
But other environmental groups are on board. Negotiators say considering its breadth, the document — covering illegal wildlife trafficking, forestry management, overfishing and marine protection — could prove to be a landmark, setting a new floor for all future multilateral accords.
The 12 countries “cover environmentally sensitive regions from tundra to island ecosystems, and from the world’s largest coral reefs to its largest rain forest,” read a summary of the environment chapter, obtained by The New York Times. It said that the document “addresses these challenges in detail.”
The completion of the environmental chapter put aside one thorny issue for a trade deal that has been in the works for eight years. But negotiators hoping to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Friday still had big gaps to bridge as they worked into the night Thursday. Those included how many years to protect new pharmaceuticals from competition, fights over access to Canada’s dairy market and to America’s sugar market, and barriers to the Japanese auto market.
If the accord is completed, it will rope together 40 percent of the global economy under an expansive set of commercial rules governing intellectual property, labor and environmental standards, market access for exports and protections for international investors.
Under the agreement, the 12 countries — encompassing places like the Peruvian rain forest and the diverse Mekong Delta in Vietnam — must commit to obeying existing wildlife trafficking treaties and its own environmental laws. Environmentally destructive subsidies, like cheap fuel to power illegal fishing vessels and governmental assistance for boat making in overfished waters, are banned.
The chapter singles out the “long-term conservation of species at risk,” like sea turtles, sea birds and marine mammals and “iconic marine species such as whales and sharks.”
The effects of the environmental agreement could be broad, both for the nations in the deal and those outside. The 12 countries account for more than a quarter of the global seafood trade and about a quarter of the world’s timber and pulp production. Five of the countries rank among the world’s most biologically diverse.
Some, like Vietnam and Malaysia, have long faced criticism for illegal wildlife trafficking, like rhino horns. Japan has been repeatedly scrutinized for its treatment of whales and dolphins. The World Bank has estimated that as much as 80 percent of Peru’s logging exports are harvested illegally.
Failure to comply would subject the singing nations to the same government-to-government compliance procedures as any other issue covered by the trade agreement, potentially culminating in trade sanctions. U.S. negotiators hope that just the threat of economic sanctions would bolster relatively weak environmental ministries in countries like Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Some environmental groups — and many Democrats in Congress — are likely to be dissatisfied. They complain that agreeing to a series of “obligations” falls short of “requirements.” The Sierra Club has complained that the United States has yet to pursue trade remedies against countries already obliged to environmental enforcement under existing trade accords, like the U.S.-Peru free-trade deal.
On Wednesday, 19 House Democrats who voted in May to give President Barack Obama expanded trade negotiating powers warned they could still withdraw their support for the Pacific accord if it falls short on environmental protection.
“Aspirational language is necessary in some instances, but their use does not guarantee that specific actions will be taken to meet those corresponding objectives,” they wrote. “We hope a final agreement provides strong language on core environmental commitments.”
Ilana Solomon, director of Sierra Club’s responsible trade program, latched on to the letter to declare, “An agreement that falls flat on the environment will not win the support from Congress.”
Under the terms of the new accord, member countries are required to beef up port inspections and document checks, a provision that could expand the scope of the deal beyond the 12 counties. Illegal wildlife and timber harvests bound for countries like China go through Trans-Pacific Partnership ports, especially Singapore’s.
And TPP countries are required to take action if they discover contraband that has been harvested illegally, even if the particular product is not illegal in their country.
In January 2014, an earlier version of the environmental chapter was exposed by the group WikiLeaks. That 2013 version seemed to indicate the American team was retreating from its hard-line insistence on a comprehensive, enforceable environmental chapter.
U.S. negotiators concede that the final version was a difficult fight. The Japanese protested the specific language on whaling and marine mammal preservation, concerned it could aid an ongoing dispute with Australia over the same issue. Most of the countries in the TPP have never signed a trade agreement that would subject their environmental stewardship to economic sanctions.