This call for the defence of maize and all peasant seeds comes amid increasing pressure to impose the so-called UPOV laws through trade agreements and other neoliberal policies throughout the region.
As debt pressures rise, South Asia’s economic strategies are increasingly revolving around FTAs. The frenzy, however, is not only reshaping the region’s trade dynamics, but also a wide array of national legal frameworks, from labour rights to agriculture policies.
More than $100bn of public money has been awarded to private investors in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) courts, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet.
The Council of the EU adopted a historic decision to withdraw the European Union from the Energy Charter Treaty, an international investment treaty from the 1990s increasingly used by the fossil fuel industry to sue governments over their climate and energy policies.
During the TIFA meeting, the United States and the Philippines discussed a range of bilateral trade and investment issues, including agriculture, labor, government procurement, intellectual property, environment, automotive safety standards, and supply chains.
China and Switzerland signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed to officially start negotiations for the upgrade of the Sino-Swiss free trade agreement as soon as possible, according to Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
The head of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran said that the first round of the talks for launching the Preferential Trade Agreement between Iran and the Sultanate of Oman was held in Muscat.
The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Mongolia have completed negotiations on a temporary trade agreement; it might be signed by the end of this year, according to the Eurasian Economic Commission.
The modernized agreement updates and adds new language in areas such as trade in services, investment, temporary entry for business people, telecommunications, digital trade, labor and the environment.