Big Business Bullying Governments Over Environmental Issues?

[vetuste_ennemi]

Apologies for the clumsy phrasing of my question. The background is this: I've just had a phone call from Friends of the Earth soliciting support for a campaign against a "secret" arrangement between the EU and the US which allows companies to seek redress in the courts for losses incurred as a result of government bans on commercial activities deemed hostile to the environment. The story seems rather confused because the example she cited was a massive fine imposed by some court on the Canadian government; in this case it was for a ban on fracking. She also cited a long acronym for the legislation/trade treaty in question.Are any of you familiar with this, and can you explain it more fully to me, please?

[Buenchico]

TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is less secret than it was. See Section 2.3 ('Transparency') in this Parliamentary Report issued a fortnight ago:
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06688.pdf

For a more alarmist viewpoint, see this document from the charity War on Want:
http://www.waronwant.org/attachments/HILARY_LONDON_FINAL_WEB.pdf

The concerns you were told about in the phone call related to ISDS (investor-state dispute settlements), referred to here in a Guardian article:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/14/free-trade-deal-eu-us-environment-ngos-sustainability
but the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is adamant that they there's no threat to UK sovereignty:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/311247/bis-14-695-investor-state-dispute-settlement-faqs.pdf

[vetuste_ennemi]

I'm delighted to get such a quick answer, Buenchico. I will read it all carefully.

[Hypognosis]

I was only dimly aware of TTIP care of various Facebook/Twitter memes currently in circulation. Like any activism campaign, it is easy to get swept along by the feeling of a just cause but reading the background material is mentally draining (to me, anyway) and, after a night's sleep, I've forgotten the whole thing. Every day there's another half a dozen things demanding similar amounts of my attention.

Anyway, the fear was that BP wanted to recover large chunks of their Gulf of Mexico spill payouts because they believe there was widespread fraud, on the part of many gulf coast residents and fisheries.

Its absurd to lobby for a bill such that you can casually damage the environment, make a public show of clearup and reparations and then clawback from the government in ways which are invisible to the public before progressing onto a repeat cycle of the whole charade. Fines are supposed to instil behavioural change.

There may be a tie-in with KeystoneXL plans. There has already been a tar spill (Wisconsin??) where they bulldozed the goo into a pond, it is so dense that it sinks - "out of sight, out of mind" - and probably never will get properly cleared up unless there was an outbreak of birth defects, unequivocally linked to it. They want the legislation in place well ahead of any such disasters.