Wikileaks has just published a draft of the enviromental chapter of the TPP: It's bad. [View all]

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The Obama administration could be selling out environmental protections in order to cement a complex international trade deal, according to new documents revealed on Wednesday by WikiLeaks. Today, the whistle-blowing organization published the Environment Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bilateral agreement that has been in the works since 2010 — confirming critics' fears that the plan will be bad news for the planet

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Now, WikiLeaks has unveiled the proposed environmental chapter, and says the Obama Administration's environmental demands are weak:

When compared against other TPP chapters, the Environment Chapter is noteworthy for its absence of mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement measures. The dispute settlement mechanisms it creates are cooperative instead of binding; there are no required penalties and no proposed criminal sanctions. With the exception of fisheries, trade in 'environmental' goods and the disputed inclusion of other multilateral agreements, the Chapter appears to function as a public relations exercise.

The Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program director Ilana Solomon told The New York Times that the draft deal, if confirmed, would undo environmental protections enacted by the U.S. Solomon said, "it rolls back key standards set by Congress to ensure that the environment chapters are legally enforceable, in the same way the commercial parts of free-trade agreements are."

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http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/01/obama-trades-environment-trade-deal/357026/