Government hails Trans-Pacific trade deal, but green groups raise alarm over deforestation risks
New Trans-Pacific partnership will see tariffs cut on a range of exports fuelling fears deal could exacerbate palm oil-related deforestation
Environmental campaigners have today criticised the UK’s new Trans-Pacific trade deal, warning it could make a “mockery” out of the UK’s efforts to curb deforestation and compromise the UK’s relatively high environmental and food standards.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today announced the UK has agreed a new trade deal to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – a free trade area of 11 countries spanning the Indo-Pacific that are estimated to have a collective GDP of £11tr.
The government said the trade deal, which was agreed after two years of “intense negotiants”, was the biggest such agreement since Brexit.
It argued that joining the Trans-Pacific partnership would cut tariffs on exports for UK industries including food, drink, cars, and clean tech, providing major new opportunities for UK firms.
The CPTPP was first established in 2018 and the UK will be the first country to join since it was launched. The other members of the CPTPP are Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam.
The member states are collectively home to more than 500 million people and will account for around 15 per cent of global GDP once the UK joins, the government said. It estimated that joining will boost the UK economy by £1.8bn in the long run.
“We are at our heart an open and free-trading nation, and this deal demonstrates the real economic benefits of our post-Brexit freedoms,” said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, adding that the UK is now in a “prime” position to “seize opportunities” for new jobs, growth and innovation.
“Joining the CPTPP trade bloc puts the UK at the centre of a dynamic and growing group of Pacific economies, as the first new nation and first European country to join,” he said. “British businesses will now enjoy unparalleled access to markets from Europe to the south Pacific.”
The government described the UK’s membership to the CPTPP as a “gateway to the wider Indo-Pacific region”, which it said has 60 per cent of the world’s population and is set to account for the majority – or 54 per cent – of global economic growth, as well as “around half of the world’s billion middle-class consumers in the decades ahead.”
However, some of the proposed cuts to tariffs have already begun to anger green groups, with the news that the UK will now have a Free Trade Agreement with Malaysia for the first time causing particular concern.
While the government celebrated the deal with Malaysia as meaning UK businesses will now have greater access to an economy which was worth £271bn in GDP in 2021, Greenpeace warned the agreement could have significant environmental impacts. The planned cuts in tariffs will apply to the export palm oil, which the campaign group branded a “major driver” of deforestation in climate critical forests across Malaysia, Papua, and Indonesia.”
“It makes a total mockery of the UK government’s legislation to tackle deforestation in UK supply chains and runs completely counter to the government’s promise to put the environment at the very heart of trade,” said Daniela Montalto, forests campaigner at Greenpeace UK. “Prioritising people and the climate means introducing binding targets, legislation and fiscal measures to reduce production and consumption of products linked to forest destruction to allow these critical natural ecosystems to recover – crucial if we are to stay below 1.5C.”
Green groups also warned that the deal, like the trade agreement with Australia before it, would allow the import of products that are produced to lower environmental standards than British goods, potentially putting domestic producers are a disadvantage.
Campaigners from WWF noted that 119 pesticides which are banned in the UK are permitted across CPTPP members for agriculture use, of which WWF warned 56 per cent are deemed “highly hazardous”, with these pesticides known to kill bee populations and destroy aquatic ecosystems.
Angela Francis, WWF’s director of policy solutions, criticised the deal warning that the government “is encouraging hugely destructive agriculture, which would be illegal in the UK, into our market”.
“This announcement risks more imports of food produced in ways that drive deforestation, use harmful pesticides, or rely on unregulated fishing practices – all of which undermine the high standards UK producers are already required to meet,” she added.
Francis said there are currently no environmental standards on food imported into the UK, and as such the government should “fix this” by implementing a set of core environmental standards. “To fix our broken food system and save our wild isles, the UK must show it is serious about delivering on its climate and nature promises,” she added.
In December last year, the EU launched a new law to demonstrate its commitment to nature protection and deforestation as well as mitigate any detrimental environmental impacts associated with exports with its Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The law prevents companies from placing commodities linked with either deforestation or forest degradation onto the EU market, or from being exported from the EU and therefore effectively guarantees to EU consumers that the products they buy are not contributing to deforestation.
But while the Environment Act in the UK made it illegal in 2021 for large businesses in the UK to use forest risk commodities whose production has been associated with large-scale forest loss, campaigners suggested there is more that could be done to help tackle global deforestation in light of the UK’s new trade deal with one of the world’s biggest palm oil exporters.
Jonny Peters, senior policy advisor at think tank E3G, said that while joining CPTPP is overall positive for Britain’s global influence, the UK still urgently needs to strike a better balance between its free trade agenda and promoting higher climate and environmental standards.
“For example, the UK could follow the EU and introduce robust due diligence requirements for UK importers to address deforestation in their overseas supply chains,” he added. “This would then compensate for the UK having lowered tariffs for Malaysian palm oil in the context of CPTPP.”
Peters also suggested the UK should follow the example of New Zealand and agree a side letter opt out from Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which he argued in the context of CPTPP could protect the UK’s rights to introduce more ambitious climate and environmental regulations.
Concerns have also been raised that the UK’s high animal welfare and food standards could be compromised by the deal. When the UK agreed its Trade Bill with Australia and New Zealand in 2021, farmers, environmentalists and consumers raised concerns relating to antibiotic and pesticide use when the countries were granted unlimited access to the UK’s agri-food market as part of the deal.
The government responded by launching a new Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC), which the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) hailed as positive progress. However, the NFU noted that at the same time it called for a new set of “core standards” for food imports, and revealed that it has “heard nothing” from the government on the proposal.
Following the CPTPP deal, countries including major agricultural exporters such as Canada, Mexico, and Chile will also be able to access the UK market under the terms of the trade. With the ambition to grow food exports by 30 per cent by the end of the decade, the NFU acknowledged that joining the bloc could offer opportunities, such as growing dairy exports to the Americas, poultry to Vietnam, and sheep meat to Malaysia.
“Joining the CPTPP could provide some good opportunities to get more fantastic British food on plates overseas,” said NFU’s president Minette Batters, but she added that in terms of food safety it is “an absolute red line for us that food produced using practices that are illegal here – for instance, the use of hormones in beef and pork production and chemical washes for carcases – should not be allowed on our market”.
