The Precautionary Principle: Geopolitical Choices and Ethical Concerns-A case for Canada to Operationalise the Principle in its Policy of Strategic Environmental Assessment of Trade Agreements
Kanaka Nagaraj Sabapathy
Canada's proposed SEA policy for trade agreements is an ideal opportunity for the country to institutionalize the Precautionary Principle in its environmental ethics. Canada has already accepted the Principle in international forums. Besides it finds place in several policies including the mining policy. The Precautionary Principle has been incorporated in the Environmental Protection Chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade, which has come into force in 1995. The aim of this Agreement is to reduce inter-provincial barriers to trade. Article 1502.3 permits the use of the PP as a rationale for environmental measures even if these might have a negative impact upon internal trade. The paper will argue that the use of the PP is especially suited for SEA. It is well known that the actual process of assessment and impact evaluation under SEA helps to place environmental considerations further up the political agenda and requires both decision-makers and officials to clarify their role with respect to environmental protection.
Despite the clear official acceptance of the Principle, there appears to be a shyness and hesitancy on the part of Canada to institutionalize it at the wider policy level and provide the lead in the North American continent. There appear to be several reasons for this. The paper will explore one of these reasons, which relate to geopolitical choices. The paper will argue that the PP will lend itself to become institutionalized in the continent only if there is a pact between the U.S. and Canada and there could be no better opportunity than a policy on SEA. The paper will explore how the harmonization of environmental impact assessment in the EU has now been extended to SEA and how this advances the EIA requirement to an earlier stage in accordance with a precautionary approach to environmental regulation. The paper will touch briefly upon the scenario in the U.S. where the precautionary approach is being applied on a case by case basis. In November 1999 in its declaration of trade policy the U.S has specifically made it clear that it would work towards "ensuring that trade rules are supportive of and do not undermine our ability to maintain and enforce fully our environmental laws by staking out U.S. positions on issues such as the WTO's deference to national regulatory authorities and trade measures based on processes and production methods (PPM's), ecolabelling and precaution". Since the SEA regimes of the U.S. and Canada are just being initiated the time maybe ripe for a debate on a continental understanding for operationalizing the PP in the SEA policy on trade agreements.