Asia trade deal will undercut farmers’ control over seeds
BARCELONA – Ever since the ink dried on the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), people have become aware of another mega-trade deal being
negotiated behind closed doors in the Asia-Pacific region. Like the TPP,
the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) threatens to
increase corporate power in member countries, leaving ordinary people
with little recourse to assert their rights to things like land, safe
food, life-saving medicines and seeds.
RCEP is being negotiated between the ten countries that form the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their six biggest
trading partners in the region: Australia, China, India, Japan, New
Zealand and South Korea.
According to the latest leaked draft of the RCEP agreement, dated
October 15, 2015 and published by Knowledge Ecology International, the
negotiating countries fall into two camps when it comes to legal rights
over biodiversity and traditional knowledge useful for food production
and medicine.
The “hard-line” camp, pushing to strengthen the legal rights of
corporations, is composed of the Australian, Japanese and Korean
governments. |