Impact of TPP on Australias Ecological Sustainability - Example

Impact of TPP on Australia’s Ecological Sustainability Name Institution Course Instructor Date Impact of TPP on Australia’s Ecological Sustainability Introduction The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a wide regionalized trading treaty that is currently being finalized by Pacific Rim countries. These countries include Canada, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Japan, Brunei, Mexico, Singapore, United States (US), New Zealand and Chile The treaty’s negotiations are being handled confidentially (Fergusson & Vaughn 2010, p. 2). This means that the discursive documents of the agreement are not available for public review or scrutiny. The completion of the treaty will mark the inception of the largest ever region-based trade accord. The statistics produced by Australia’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Department (DFAT) shows that TPP will take approximately 25% of the world’s trade. The trade percentage is characterized with 12% of the global population and almost 38% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). TPP negotiations started in 2010; however, core disagreements on sustainability effects of the treaty are currently delaying the finalization of the treaty. In this regard, this paper seeks to critically analyze the impact of TPP on Australia's ability to achieve an ecological sustainable society. Background The TPP negotiations started in early 2010. With five years on, almost every aspect of the treaty is complete. For instance, all participating countries have agreed to ratify the legal framework of the treaty. However, there are core issues that are hindering the conclusion of the negotiations. These core issues are centred on the sustainability disagreements between member-state countries. Recent reports hint that the disagreements stem from the agricultural market-based accessibility. Also, other disagreements are linked to the effects of TPP on domestic health and environment policy making areas (Fergusson & Vaughn 2010, p. 10). To further understand the impacts of TPP, it is important to acknowledge its influence on the traditional trade framework. In this regard, TPP intends to remove tariffs such as import taxes and other trade barriers. The removal of trade tariffs implies that the member-states will enjoy free flow of products across borders (Bergsten & Schott 2010, p. 2). In doing so, the treaty is expected to extend its operational mandate to trade areas that are traditionally handled by individual countries. Such extension can influence the democratic process of making policies in each individual country. After noting TPP’s policy influences, many domestic and international organizations are concerned about the potential impacts of TPP on human rights and health. Some of the predicted impacts include, first, limited access to inexpensive medicine. Second, TPP may impose policy restrictions on alcohol and tobacco trade (Capling & Ravenhill 2011, p. 554). Third, TPP may reduce food and nutrition security concerns. Fourth, TPP may increase the cost of health care service provision. Fifth, TPP may impact negatively on ecological sustainability. Finally, TPP can increase environmental-based risk exposure. Regardless of the notable negative impacts, TPP negotiations are still ongoing under confidential conditions. In the context of Australia, there is inadequate public access to quality information concerning the TPP negotiations. However, in the US, many organizations have access and influence to ongoing TPP negotiations (Petri, Plummer & Zhai 2012, p. 71; Flynn, Baker, Kaminski & Koo 2013, p. 106). It is clear that the Australian government disregards the influence of its domestic organizations. Furthermore, it states that it cannot ratify an agreement that negatively affects Australia’s ecological sustainability. This means that the government’s TPP negotiation commitments focus on establishing an ecologically sustainable Australia. Whereby, the agreement will not undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme’s integrity or compromise the Australian policies on environment and health. Unfortunately, leaked information suggests many aspects of TPP agreement violate Australia’s ecological sustainability in terms of health, environment and human rights. Moreover, in the context of trade-offs, the negotiations are prone to captivate issues that concern investor-state dispute clauses (ISDC). The following section critically assesses the implications of implementing TPP on ecological sustainability. Critical assessment First, there are various TPP provisions that can impact Australia’s medicine sector. Whereby, there is a possible increment of medicine costs. The increment can subsequently increase out-of-pocket patient expenses. It is important to note that patent-based increment of co-payments decreases the usage of particular prescriptions (Faunce & Townsend 2011, p. 83). Therefore, there is a high likelihood that TPP’s influence on medicinal costs will probably affect Australia’s health status. Such effects can highly affect susceptible populations, especially the low income earners and patients with persistent medical conditions. It is further impossible to alienate the negative impacts of TPP on Australia’s medicine sector due to the presence of ISDCs in the treaty. For instance, ISDC’s health provision allows foreign corporations to challenge the government’s policy control on medicine. In order to resolve the negative impacts, the Australian government needs to refute any TPP’s provisions that can increase public or government medicinal costs (Gleeson & Friel 2013, p. 1506; Gleeson, Lopert & Reid 2013, p. 232). However, since ISDC allows the inclusion of such provisions, the government needs to ensure that the given provisions have restricted monopolistic control. This means that the provisions should not exceed the inflexibility imposed on government actions by the World Trade Organization (WTO) TRIPS Agreement. Also, the government needs to ensure that TPP does not affect co-payments incurred by patients. If the government imposes the above-mentioned considerations, TPP’s implementation will not affect medicine costs. Second, based on the leaked information, the implementation of TPP can affect tobacco control frameworks. In this case, TPP’s provisions can restrain Australia’s state and federal governments from controlling tobacco trade. For instance, the ISDCs allow foreign corporations to prevent government-imposed tobacco advertisement. These advertisements are important in increasing awareness about the harmful effects of tobacco (Kelsey 2013, p. 235). There restrictions can have negative effects on Australia’s environment and public health. Research shows that tobacco advertisements are effective in reducing the rate of smoking. The restrictions are likely to cause reverse effects. Whereby, the susceptible populations such as the youths, Torres Strait Islander societies and Aboriginal communities can experience adverse cigarette-smoking health complications. Analysts are urging the government to put necessary measures of ensuring that TPP’s provisions do not restrict tobacco advertisements. It is possible to do so if TPP is denied the mandate of determining the suitability of tobacco control policies and regulations (Faunce & Townsend 2011, p. 83). However, based on the allowances of ISDCs it is difficult for the government to restrict TPP’s policy determination. As a remedy act, the government needs to adopt certain interventions. These interventions should focus on preventing issues that affect the environment or the public health in any way. Third, TPP’s provisions will limit the government’s role in regulating alcohol consumption in Australia. This is because; the ISDCs inculcated in TPP provisions disallow the government-imposed alcohol policies. They include alcohol marketing, warning signs and alcohol accessibility policies. The implementation of such policies in the past years has seen a reduction in harmful effects of alcohol. This is because; the public became aware of negative effects of alcohol consumption. Therefore, many individuals took necessary measures to ensure safe alcohol consumption. However, the implementation of TPP will render such policies defunct. In such a case, there is a high likelihood of experiencing alcohol’s harmful effects (Gleeson, Lopert & Reid 2013, p. 228). In fact, the groups that are high vulnerable to alcohol’s negative impacts includes a large percentage of Australia’s youth population. In addition, other susceptible communities include Torres Strait Islander societies and Aboriginal communities. It is important to note that the youth population happens to be Australia’s main economic workforce. Therefore, if the workforce is compromised in anyway, the country is likely to suffer from economic labour deficiencies. The same deficiencies can cause Australia’s economy to crumble. In this regard, the government needs to adopt specific intervention frameworks. These frameworks should limit TPP’s mandate of controlling alcohol policies. Alternatively, the government can engage in continuous research to ensure that TPP’s provisions do not promote harmful alcohol consumption effects. Finally, the implementation of TPP can negatively impact the state of food security in Australia. This is based on the fact that TPP’s provisions restrict the government regulations on food commodities. The government-imposed food regulations play an important role in ensuring proper labelling of foodstuffs (Faunce & Townsend 2011, p. 85). The labelling enables the consumer to differentiate between healthy foodstuffs and unhealthy foodstuffs. However, TPP can refute such regulations on the basis that the consumer needs to rely of self-preference. This means that a given consumer needs to follow personal desires rather than healthy concerns. Research shows that personal desires are the main drivers of poor nutritive behaviours. Whereby, many people tend to consume unhealthy foods due to lack of proper nutrition guidance. As such, TPP’s restrictions can encourage high public purchase of unhealthy foods (Friel, et al. 2013, p. 51). In the long run, many people are going to suffer from nutrition complications. So, it is clear that the implementation of TPP’s ISDC-based provisions will generally affect Australia’s societal sustainability. The highly impacted area involves the health, economic and social sectors. Conclusion In conclusion, this paper critically analyzed the impact of TPP on Australia's ability to achieve an ecological sustainable society. The main areas of concern include the environment and public health sectors. Public health is a key determinant factor in the well-being of any society. Any society that targets self-sustainability requires a good public health status. It is evident that the implementation of TPP’s ISDC-based provisions will affect Australia’s public health state. The effects include negative impacts associated with medicine, tobacco, alcohol and food consumptions. The government needs to refute TPP’s provisional clauses that portray the discussed negative impacts. Furthermore, it needs to adopt intervention frameworks that limits TPP’s policy control mandate. References Bergsten, CF & Schott, JJ 2010, ‘Submission to the USTR in Support of a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’, Peterson Institute for International Economics, pp. 2-7. Capling, A & Ravenhill, J 2011, ‘Multilateralising regionalism: what role for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?’, The Pacific Review, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 553-575. Faunce, TA & Townsend, R 2011, ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: challenges for Australian health and medicine policies’, Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 2, no. 194, pp. 83-86. Fergusson, IF & Vaughn, B 2010, Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, DIANE Publishing, Collingdale, PA. Flynn, SM, Baker, BK, Kaminski, ME & Koo, J 2013, ‘The US proposal for an intellectual property chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’, American University International Law Review, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 105-202. 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