Environmental Hazards
Then there’s the opposition to the agreement due to the environmental and health hazards it poses to Filipinos. According to environment groups, the agreement will turn the Philippines into a vast dumping ground of toxic wastes because the Philippines, by removing tariffs, would allow Japan to export here 141 items found by the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources to be “environmentally sensitive products deemed potentially hazardous to health and the environment if not handled properly.” Among the items listed, according to the department, is incinerator ash, which is deemed highly toxic.
“This kind of legal toxic dumping is utterly unjust and its signing by the Philippine and Japanese governments is nothing short of criminal.” said Von Hernandez, the Filipino campaigns director of Greenpeace in Southeast Asia. “Where is the dignity in this lopsided agreement? We may be a poor country but we cannot be this desperate.”
Officials said the Philippines could benefit from JPEPA because Japan will accept more Filipino health workers, such as nurses and doctors. Overseas Filipino workers send home more than $10 billion annually, thus propping up one of the poorer economies of Southeat Asia.
Unfounded Fears
The Arroyo administration sought to dispel fears surrounding JPEPA. “This government will never allow, under any circumstances, the transport and entry of toxic wastes into Philippine soil,” said Ignacio Bunye, the president’s spokesman. “Fears of this kind are unfounded as both the Philippines and Japan are committed to respect each other’s sovereign rights and interests.”
Tokyo, meanwhile, tried to do the same. In a statement it issued two weeks ago, the Japanese embassy here said it would not export toxic wastes to any country “unless the government of such country approves such export.” It said the criticism to the agreement seemed to have sprung from “some misunderstanding.”
It said Tokyo respects the 1989 Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Toxic and Hazardous Wastes, which Japan and the Philippines ratified.
Peter Favila, the Philippine trade secretary, said the inclusion of toxic wastes in the agreement “does not mean anything.”
“One of the items included is what we call hazardous toxic wastes. That’s part of all-in trade and it does not mean that we allow them to ship waste to us. It does not mean anything,” he told reporters two weeks ago.
He said the inclusion of toxic wastes was meant to prevent Japan from asking for more concessions on other Philippine products. “If we didn’t do it, we would be forced to offer another product,” Favila said. “It’s a negotiation strategy.”
A group of Philippine exporters, meanwhile, hailed the agreement as a breakthrough for Philippine products in the Japanese market and asked the Philippine Senate, which has been holding hearings on the agreement, to ratify it. The legislature of both countries need to approve the agreement before it can be implemented. One senator said the agreement “would go through the eye of the needle” at the Senate.
Improved GDP
A study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, which took part in the research that led to the formulation of the agreement, indicated that JPEPA would improve the country’s gross domestic product by as much as 3.3 percent “if potential foreign investment inflows and productivity gains” from the agreement would materialize.
The study pointed out that the elimination of tariffs on toxic wastes “does not imply free trade because countries have trade regulations or nontariff measures that are applied to restrict trade in these goods.”
Besides, it added, similar trade agreements between Japan and such countries as Singapore and Malaysia eliminated tariffs on toxic and hazardous wastes, such as ash, residues, pharmaceutical wastes, sewage sludge, clinical wastes, among others.
The more important issue, the institute said, “is how to strengthen our technical and regulatory capacity to manage hazardous wastes and effectively implement import controls.”
Poor Environmental Record
But to environmentalists, that’s just the problem. Unlike Malaysia and Singapore, the Philippines is a poor country with hardly any facilities to recycle waste, said Beau Baconguis, an anti-toxic waste campaigner for Greenpeace based in Manila. If Japan cannot recycle its own waste, she said, “how can we expect the Philippines to do better?”
Moreover, Baconguis said, the Philippines’s record on environmental compliance is rather poor. The country, she said, cannot even solve a simple problem such as the dumping into rivers and oceans of lead from batteries or chemicals extracted from electronic products imported from Japan and other developed countries.
