1AC Advantages
Plan: The United States federal government
should give necessary funds to the United
Mexican States federal government for the
purpose of implementing and regulating the
Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational
Corporations and Other Business Enterprises
with Regard to Human Rights in maquiladoras.
BioD
Contention (): Biodiversity
Maquiladoras ignore environmental protection
laws-it’s only getting worse
Sierra Club, ’05 (Sierra Club is an organization dedicated to environmental
problems in the border region; “NAFTA’s Impact on Mexico”;
http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/downloads/nafta-and-mexico.pdf)
Toxins created by the maquiladora factories are leaking into
the land and water at alarming rates. According to Mexican
government ¶ figures, the cost of NAFTA-related
environmental damage in 1999 alone was an estimated $47
billion. It is likely that annual pollution ¶ damages from 1989 to 1999 exceeded $36
billion per year. This damage dwarfs the value of economic growth from trade, which
was only ¶ $14 billion per year. 4 ¶ Despite
an anticipated rise in
pollution levels, NAFTA did nothing to strengthen Mexico’s
environmental protections. In fact, enforcement ¶ of environmental
protections declined noticeably after NAFTA, and is often ignored by both
corporations and the Mexican government. ¶ For example: While Mexican law
requires that hazardous waste created by foreign-owned factories in the maquila
zone be shipped back to ¶ the country of origin for treatment, only
12% of 8
million tons of hazardous waste receives adequate
treatment, and only 30% is returned to ¶ the country of origin.5¶ Total
environmental inspections plummeted by 45% after 1993, and
inspections in the maquila zone decreased by ¶ 37%.6¶ In a
recent survey of maquiladora managers, 45% said that they were dissatisfied with the
availability of environmental training and ¶ 50 to 70% of respondents indicated that
they were not rewarded or given financial incentives for environmental
improvement, ¶ demonstrating the lack of importance given to environmental
protection among corporations operating in the maquiladora sector. 7¶ Although,
spending on environmental protection in Mexico grew between 1988 and 1993, it fell
by nearly half between 1994 and 1999. The
¶ cost of environmental
damage has averaged 10% of the Mexican GDP since 1999,
equivalent to $64.7 billion dollars in 2004, whereas ¶ spending for environmental
protection amounted to 0.6% of GDP, or 4.1 million dollars. Investment
in
environmental protection would¶ need to be 14.6 times greater
to keep up with the level of degradation and natural
resource destruction.
The Tijuana River is ecologically threatened by
maquiladoras
NERR 10
(“Tijuana River Comprehensive Management Plan- National
Estuarine Research Reserve”. National Estuarine Research
Reserve. August 2010.
http://www.nerrs.noaa.gov/Doc/PDF/Reserve/TJR_
MgmtPlan.pdf)
The Reserve is an ecological oasis situated in an urban
environment on an international border. The contrasts make
it a stunning natural jewel within the highly-populated,
highly developed coastline. Its intact natural systems defy
the resource-degrading activities that surround it and
threaten it. The Reserve management team faces many
challenges in protecting and enhancing the health of this
coastal wetland. The Reserve has suffered from: •
Accelerated sedimentation from erosion on both sides of the
border, smothering salt marsh and altering the estuary’s
natural hydrologic processes; • Continued encroachment of
exotic plant species that displace native habitat. The three
primary species targeted for eradication are tamarisk, castor
bean and arundo; • Flow of trash from across the
international border, particularly tires and plastics; Chronic
pollution from domestic and industrial discharges, and
continuous freshwater flows that have threatened native
species and their habitat; and • Potential vandalism of signs,
benches, research equipment, and facilities resulting from the
Reserve's location in an urban environment.
Tijuana is key to important habitats, species and
wetlands
NERR 10
(“Tijuana River Comprehensive Management Plan- National
Estuarine Research Reserve”. National Estuarine Research
Reserve. August 2010.
http://www.nerrs.noaa.gov/Doc/PDF/Reserve/TJR_
MgmtPlan.pdf)
The Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve
(TRNERR) is unique in a local, regional, national, and
international context. It offers one of the best and largest
remaining examples of California’s coastal wetland habitat, a
habitat that has been largely lost due to urban development
or seriously degraded elsewhere in southern California. This
section includes a brief description of the importance of
estuarine habitats and the natural resources protected within
the Reserve.
I. THE NEED TO PROTECT ESTUARIES A. DEFINITION Estuaries
are a hydrological and biological crossroads, defined as the
portion of the earth's coastal zone where there is interaction
of ocean water, freshwater, land, and atmosphere. The
specific plant and animal habitats that may be supported by
an estuarine system are determined by conditions in the
watershed and in the adjacent ocean. The rate at which
fresh water enters the estuary, the amount and type of
waterborne and bottom sediments, the degree of tidal
flushing, and water depth (hence temperature and degree of
sunlight), all combine to produce diverse biological
communities in a dynamic and complex system. A
significant physical change in any of those factors can
trigger traumatic changes in the estuarine biologic
community , greatly enlarging or reducing the size of various
species' populations. B. ESTUARINE FUNCTIONS Estuarine
wetlands
provide a number of valuable ecological functions, or socalled “ecosystem services.” Most broadly, there are sources
of recreational and aesthetic benefits, as witnessed by the
boom in industries such as eco-tourism. Also, they offer
critical buffers between the sea, land, and freshwater. They
can protect inland areas from ocean-borne waves and storm
activity. Also, they also can help protect the ocean from
watershed inputs, filtering and helping to purify water. In a
healthy estuarine system, the interaction of tides,
unpolluted fresh water, and sediments creates some of the
most productive systems on the planet. Sheltered shallow
waters and soft mud or sand flats, regularly flooded by the
tides, provide ideal conditions for abundant life. Among the
most important estuarine species are microscopic
photosynthetic organisms called phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton, like green plants, make the energy of sunlight
available to animals as food. Phytoplankton are consumed by
microscopic and minute animals called zooplankton. These
animals include small crustaceans such as copepods, and the
larvae of fish, crabs, clams, and other species. These
organisms themselves are part of the food supply for adults of
their own or other species. Marsh plants and eelgrass growing
in shallow estuarine waters are critically important to
estuarine animal life. Marsh vegetation not only provides
cover for many animals, but also, as it dies back each season,
creates detritus that feeds and houses the species on which
larger species depend. The blades of eelgrass are homes for
algae, snails, and other food for larger animals. Juveniles of
many species reach adulthood by hiding among estuarine
vegetation. In an undisturbed estuary, the wealth of food can
support huge populations of immature and adult fish, crabs,
shrimp, and other species. Those animals provide essential
food for populations of birds and mammals, including
people. ¶ C. MODIFICATION OF ESTUARIES Estuaries-characteristically flat land that offers sheltered access to the
sea, and a profusion of fish and other seafood--offer attractive
conditions for human habitation, agricultural production, and
transportation. Estuaries on the west coast of the U.S.
supported native peoples for thousands of years and, more
recently, settlers from other parts of the globe. ¶ Prior to the
1970s, the value and finite nature of estuaries were not fully
appreciated. It was not recognized that estuaries are
integral to ecological and human well-being. Destruction
of estuaries was disastrously affecting water quality,
commercial and recreational fisheries, and overall
ecosystem health. Estuary-dependent plants and animal
populations began to dwindle with lost habitat, food
sources, and reproductive sites. Affected species included
not only ¶ salmonids, crab, and clams, but also birds such as
eagles and falcons, which feed on the ¶ tideflats. Increasing
awareness of the value of estuaries triggered current efforts
to preserve, ¶ conserve, and restore these fragile systems.
Wetlands are key to the hydro-cycle – the impact is
extinction
Ramsar Convention, 96, “Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands, Wetlands and Biodiversity, Executive Summary”,
http://www.ramsar.org/about/about_biodiversity.htm, ACC:
12.20.08, p. online
Wetlands - including (inter alia) rivers, lakes, marshes,
estuaries, lagoons, mangroves, seagrass beds, and peatlands
- are among the most precious natural resources on Earth.
These highly varied ecosystems are natural areas where water
accumulates for at least part of the year. Driven by the
hydrological cycle, water is continuously being recycled
through the land, sea and atmosphere in a process which
ensures the maintenance of ecological functions. Wetlands
support high levels of biological diversity: they are, after
tropical rainforests, amongst the richest ecosystems on this
planet, providing essential life support for much of
humanity, as well as for other species. Coastal wetlands,
which may include estuaries, seagrass beds and mangroves,
are among the most productive, while coral reefs contain
some of the highest known levels of biodiversity (nearly onethird of all known fish species live on coral reefs). Other
wetlands also offer sanctuary to a wide variety of plants,
invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, as
well as to millions of both migratory and sedentary
waterbirds. Wetlands are not only sites of exceptional
biodiversity, they are also of enormous social and economic
value, in both traditional and contemporary societies. Since
ancient times, people have lived along water courses,
benefiting from the wide range of goods and services
available from wetlands. The development of many of the
great civilisations was largely based on their access to, and
management of, wetland resources. Wetlands are an integral
part of the hydrological cycle, playing a key role in the
provision and maintenance of water quality and quantity as
the basis of all life on earth. They are often interconnected
with other wetlands, and they frequently constitute rich and
diverse transition zones between aquatic ecosystems and
terrestrial ecosystems such as forests and grasslands.
Tijuana River Estuary is uniquely key to
international biodiversity
Romo 2-13
Oscar Romo. Oscar Romo, Ph.D., is a former United Nations
diplomat and now the watershed coordinator at the Tijuana
River National Estuarine Research ReserveAlpha Forma, LLC.
“Detection, Mapping and Communication of Solid Waste
Pollution Sources in the Tijuana River Valley.” Febuary 13
2013.http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sandiego/board_info/a
gendas/2013/Feb/item7/Item7_sup_doc_1.pdf)
The Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve
(TRNERR) preserves one of the largest remaining examples
of coastal wetland habitats in the southern California subregion, including beach, dune, mud flat, salt marsh, riparian,
coastal sage and upland habitats. The 2,293 acre Tijuana River
Reserve is located in Imperial Beach, Calif., situated in a highly
urbanized location, 15 miles south of San Diego and
immediately adjacent to Tijuana, Mexico. Three quarters of
the reserve’s watershed is in Mexico, so reserve programs
apply an international perspective to critical issues of habitat
restoration, endangered species management, and trash and
sediment flows from Mexico (TRNERR management plan).
The reserve is recognized as a ‘wetland of international
importance’ by the Ramsar Convention. The Tijuana River
Estuary is one of the few salt marshes remaining in Southern
California, where over 90% of wetland habitat has been lost to
development. The site is an essential breeding, feeding,
nesting ground and key stopover point on the Pacific Flyway
for over 370 species of migratory and native birds, including
the endangered Light-footed clapper rail, California least
tern, Least Bell’s vireo, and white and brown pelicans
Biodiversity key to life on earth, especially now
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 11
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (2011, August 14).
“Biodiversity key to Earth's life-support functions in a
changing world.” ScienceDaily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811084513.htm
The biological diversity of organisms on Earth is not just
something we enjoy when taking a walk through a blossoming
meadow in spring; it is also the basis for countless products
and services provided by nature, including food, building
materials, and medicines as well as the self-purifying
qualities of water and protection against erosion. These socalled ecosystem services are what makes Earth inhabitable
for humans. They are based on ecological processes, such as
photosynthesis, the production of biomass, or nutrient cycles.
Since biodiversity is on the decline, both on a global and a
local scale , researchers are asking the question as to what
role the diversity of organisms plays in maintaining these
ecological processes and thus in providing the ecosystem's
vital products and services. In an international research group
led by Prof. Dr. Michel Loreau from Canada, ecologists from
ten different universities and research institutes, including
Prof. Dr. Michael Scherer-Lorenzen from the University of
Freiburg, compiled findings from numerous biodiversity
experiments and reanalyzed them. These experiments
simulated the loss of plant species and attempted to
determine the consequences for the functioning of
ecosystems, most of them coming to the conclusion that a
higher level of biodiversity is accompanied by an increase in
ecosystem processes. However, the findings were always only
valid for a certain combination of environmental conditions
present at the locations at which the experiments were
conducted and for a limited range of ecosystem processes. In
a study published in the current issue of the journal Nature,
the research group investigated the extent to which the
positive effects of diversity still apply under changing
environmental conditions and when a multitude of processes
are taken into account. They found that 84 percent of the 147
plant species included in the experiments promoted
ecological processes in at least one case . The more years,
locations, ecosystem processes, and scenarios of global
change -- such as global warming or land use intensity -- the
experiments took into account, the more plant species
were necessary to guarantee the functioning of the
ecosystems . Moreover, other species were always
necessary to keep the ecosystem processes running under
the different combinations of influencing factors. These
findings indicate that much more biodiversity is necessary to
keep ecosystems functioning in a world that is changing ever
faster. The protection of diversity is thus a crucial factor in
maintaining Earth's life-support functions.
Labor Laws
Contention (): Human Rights
Status quo maquiladora labor laws go unenforced
Shah (Mitali, Mount Holoyke College, "Cons of
maquiladoras" pg online @
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~shah20m/classweb/c
ons.html)
The abuse and mistreatment of maquiladora workers is the
main social problem of maquiladoras. Although the Mexican
law provides sufficient protections for the employees, the factory
managers often ignore it. Earning significantly less than the United State's
minimum wage, a maquiladora worker only receives about $3.40
an hour, which is not nearly enough to support a family.
Industrial accidents and toxic exposures are common in the plants. Often
workers are not given adequate training or provided with
safety equipment. Physical risks such as noise, heat,
vibrations, poor ventilation, and awkward posture have a
high occurrence in maquiladoras. Women are further
subjected to unfair discrimination in the maquiladoras. The
Mexican government fails to protect women from pregnancy testing and other
violating treatment. Reports find that female workers are routinely subjected to
mandatory urine testing and may be forced to resign if they become pregnant. In a
letter to Human Rights Watch, Zenith Corporation said, "It is common practice among
Mexican and maquiladora employers in Matamoros and Reynosa to inquire about
pregnancy status as a pre-existing medical condition." The
report concluded
that Zenith admitted to screening out pregnant women from
its applicant pools in order to avoid company-funded
maternity benefits. This treatment of women creates
separate hiring criteria than men, which is a violation of
Mexian federal labor law. ¶ In 2002 Seafood Workers in Santa Rosalía
denounced the Maquila Hanjin and Brumar for numerous violations to labor law,
child labor law, and basic human rights. 96 of them were subsequently fired for trying
to form a union. Six years later
the struggle grows , a lawsuit has been filed
and workers continue to establish their union. The following video clip shows their
struggle.
IMPACT A: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Maquila women are subjected to sexual violence,
psychological trauma, and infanticide
Pantaleo 2006¶ Katie California University of Pennsylvania
∗ ¶ Katie Pantaleo graduated with honors from California
University of Pennsylvania ¶ in 2006. She was also the
president of the Ssociology Club. Katie is currently ¶ pursuing
a master’s degree in social policy at Duquesne University.
Sociological Viewpoints “GENDERED VIOLENCE: ¶ MURDER IN
THE MAQUILADORAS” Fall 2006
http://www.pasocsociety.org/article2.pdf Herm
One of the problems that many Mexican women face while
working in maquiladoras has less to do with discrimination
in hiring and more to do with discriminating practices in the
workplace. While there is no discrimination against women
working in maquiladoras, there is pregnancy discrimination in
the workplace. Women who are pregnant are turned away
immediately, while those who are hired can be subject to
established practices designed to discourage and prevent
pregnancy. These practices are as follows: pregnancy testing,
proof of menstruation, and physical harm. First of all, women
can be forced to undergo pregnancy testing throughout their
work term (Abell 1999). This occurs randomly and without
notice and usually consists of a urine test. A second practice is
more painful for the women, psychologically and emotionally.
Each month, women may be mandated to demonstrate
proof of their menstruation by showing sanitary napkins to
managers. Also a series of intrusive questions are asked to
each female employee, such as the date of her last period,
what kind of contraception she uses, and when the last time
was she had sex (Koerner 1999). The third practice adds
physical harm to the existing emotional and psychological
stress. Women may be deliberately punched in the stomach
and abdomen by managers to make sure that they are not
pregnant or to damage any unborn child. Because of these
practices, female maquiladora workers suffer numerous
consequences. In relation to reproduction in general,
maquiladora workers are likely to have irregular
menstruation, miscarriages, fertility problems, and to bear
children with birth defects such as premature births or low
birth weight (Abell 1999).
Sexual violence against individuals constitutes a
war against whole communities and peoples, a war
which dehumanizes and robs individuals of their
individuality, and is a D-Rule for the aff.
Chowdhury 2002 (Rumna Chowdhury, Former Program
Manager of the Battered Women’s Legal Advocacy Project,
Winter 2002, “Kadic v. Karadzic - Rape as a Crime Against
Women as a Class”, Law and Inequality”, 20 Law & Ineq. J. 91,
p. L/N)
Feminist scholars have long recognized sexual violence as a
tool used by men to manipulate and control women through
fear. n52 [*100] In fact, some assert that rape , identified by
psychologists as " the most intrusive of traumatic events ,"
n53 itself constitutes a war against women. n54
Internationally, there is a long history of rape and violent
sexual abuse of women during times of armed conflict. n55
From the founding of the city of Rome n56 to the Gulf War,
n57 history is replete with examples of such violence. n58
[*101] The repercussions of rape for an individual woman
may last far beyond the actual attack or attacks, often
affecting her for the rest of her life. n59 Beyond the physical
pain and degradation, fear remains long after an attack. n60
For those who survive an attack, there is the risk of sexually
transmitted diseases and infections, infertility, and
pregnancy, n61 in addition to other physical and
psychological disorders. n62 Pregnancy poses a particular
problem because it forces women to face the possibility that
they may bear their attacker's child. n63 People from the
woman's own community may see her child as proof of her
immoral behavior and, in the case of rape committed by
enemy forces, collaboration with that enemy. n64 Abortion is
often not an option because of scarce medical resources or
strict religious teachings. n65 In some communities, infertility,
disease, and loss of virginity leave women unmarriageable.
n66 Many women commit suicide because they are unable
to bear the trauma and shame associated with their attack .
n67 The effects of rape likewise reach beyond the individual
woman attacked and undermine the well-being and security
of her family and community. n68 In addition to the basic
medical care needed following a violent attack, a woman
facing disease or pregnancy will require additional medical
attention, which may place a strain on an already ailing
community. n69 Psychological trauma may move beyond the
individual to affect spouses, parents, [*102] and children.
n70 Oftentimes, "the harm inflicted ... on a woman by a rapist
is an attack on her family and culture, as in many societies
women are viewed as repositories of a community's cultural
and spiritual values." n71 A traumatized individual may not be
able to fulfill her obligations to her family or community,
resulting in a gradual halting of everyday activities. n72 Shame
that often leads to suicide or exile (whether forced by the
community or voluntary) leaves children without mothers and
leaves the community in a more advanced state of trauma:
such a community has to face not only the attack of its
women, but their absence as well. n73 To compound this
devastation, the fear that a woman feels after an attack
spreads to other women in the community who were not
personally attacked but who are aware that they may be the
next target. n74 The effects of sexual violence on both
individual women and on their communities are not an
incidental byproduct of the violence of war. On the contrary,
the effects of sexual violence are precisely the purpose for the
violence, because it causes widespread fear and trauma.
Sexual violence is used not only to control and manipulate
individual women, but also to exert power over entire
communities, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia. n75
Law professor Christine Chinkin writes: “Rape in war is not
merely a matter of chance, of women victims being in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Nor is it a question of sex. It is
rather a question of power and control which is structured by
male soldiers' notions of their masculine privilege, by the
strength of the military's lines of command and by class and
ethnic inequalities among women. n76 Sexual violence during
times of armed conflict forwards the goal of having power and
control over individual women as well as entire communities.
Recognition of the widespread community effects of violence
against women is crucial to disassembling the public/private
dichotomy. Because the effects of sexual violence are not
simply private, the crime is also not simply private, and
therefore deserves public attention.” [*103] Radhika
Coomaraswamy, United Nations Special Rapporteur n77 on
Violence Against Women, identifies several reasons for sexual
violence against women during armed conflict. n78
Coomaraswamy maintains that violence against an individual
woman may be directed towards her social group because "to
rape a woman is to humiliate her community." n79 The raping
of women in a community is a declaration to the men of that
community that they have been defeated, for they have
failed at their most basic task: to ostensibly protect "their"
women. n80 Law professor Catharine MacKinnon makes the
assertion that the systematic sexual violence against women
during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia would not have
happened unless rape was acceptable as an everyday
phenomenon. n81 She notes: “One result is that these rapes
are not grasped either as a strategy in genocide or as a
practice of misogyny, far less as both at once. What is
happening to Bosnian and Croatian women at the hands of
the Serbian forces is continuous both with this ethnic war of
aggression and with the gendered war of aggression of
everyday life. For most women, this is to everyday rape what
the Holocaust was to everyday anti-Semitism: without the
everyday, you could not have the conflagration...” n82 This
acceptance of everyday rape and its relegation to the
"private" realm allow for the use of rape as a tool of war while
maintaining the private categorization and avoidance of
liability for egregious violence against women. The Kadic
action, which held Karadzic liable for his ordered violence
against women, is an example of the removal of rape from its
private categorization. n83 Rape is not a private crime against
individual women; rather, it is a crime committed against
women as a class. The sheer number of women who are
sexually violated every year supports [*104] this argument.
n84 Having considered the "public" effects of "private" sexual
violence, it is clear that rape is a problem that deserves much
more attention than it has traditionally received.
Maquiladora workers are especially vulnerable to
rising femicide on the border
Olivia Kirkpatrick 3/27/13 From the Central American
Women’s Network for the Latin American Bureau
http://lab.org.uk/femicide-in-mexico-the-cotton-field-caseand-its-sequels
“We are here today because the search for our daughters in unstoppable, femicide
and disappearances force us to continue fighting without respite to demand justice,
to raise awareness and to show solidarity, to join forces and denounce together.”¶ —
These were the words of the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared
Daughters in Ciudad Juárez, dozens of women who came together to give a press
conference on March 11th 2013.¶ This year it will be two decades since this
phenomenon began, they said, “20 years of impunity, of pain for the mothers and
families of Ciudad Juárez”. (Click here for the full report).¶ In
1993 young
women from Juárez started disappearing and turning up in
fields and rubbish dumps, mutilated, sexually abused and
murdered. Many of the victims were factory workers who
disappeared while travelling to or from work. Others were
teenage students, migrants and other vulnerable young
women. According to data from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 47 per cent of
victims (1993-2004) were aged between 10-19 years and 27.8 per cent between 2029 years).¶ Such
murders of women in Mexico have continued
to escalate in recent years, in the complete absence of
effective investigations and justice. Women’s organisations
use the term femicide or feminicide to describe the brutal
killings of women by men, often preceded by intense sexual
violence and torture.¶ Femicide occurs not only in Ciudad Juárez, but
country-wide: at least 34,000 women were murdered in Mexico between 1985 and
2009, according to figures produced by the UN and local rights groups. In 2010 alone,
Amnesty reported that 2,418 women were killed nationwide, 320 of them in Ciudad
Juárez. Between June 2011 and June 2012 almost 4,000 women and girls were
reported as disappeared.¶ Ciudad
Juárez is a border town in
Chihuahua with an estimated population of 1.4 million. It is a
free-trade zone for exports to the USA, established following
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and
hosts about three hundred assembly plants (called
maquilas). Young women from all over Mexico and Central
America come to Ciudad Juárez to find work in these
factories. They are especially vulnerable to exploitation by
their employers and to acts of violence because they lack the
social networks that exist in their home communities.¶ In the
past five years a number of laws have been approved and institutions established to
protect women from discrimination and violence. One of the most important is the
General Law of Access for Women to a Life Free from Violence (GLAWLFV) which
recognizes femicide as a crime and lays responsibility both on the perpetrator and on
the State for failing in its duty to safeguard women’s lives. However, a
lack of
political will and dedicated resources means that many of
these measures are useless in practice. Not only has the
State continued to neglect its duty to protect women and
tackle the causes of extreme VAW, but femicide rates have
increased in the past few years with little being done to
prevent these crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice.
This contributes to anti-feminist sentiment
Nidya Sarria 8/3/2009 Research Associate for the Council on
Hemispheric Relations ‘FEMICIDES OF JUÁREZ: VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN IN MEXICO’
http://www.coha.org/femicides-of-juarez-violence-againstwomen-in-mexico/
Mexican-owned as well as joint venture industries have not
prospered post-NAFTA, except for maquiladoras, a unique
from of production that grew out of these new economic
policies. Maquiladoras flourished as a result of the Mexican government being
largely responsible for their growth. They used presidential decrees to enact
programs to attract foreign investment, such as the Border Industrialization
Programme (BIP) in 1965. The peso was devalued at the end of 1980s and 1990s,
and programs were created to encourage export industries, as well as trade
agreements, such as NAFTA. As a whole, these policies, at least for a time, have
made maquiladoras the most dynamic industrial sector in Mexico.¶ Within
the
maquiladoras, globalization has caused the deregulation of
different workplace dynamics; women are usually preferred
as workers because it is assumed that they will more flexible
accept new shifts in production, such as job changes and
changeable hours. The young women of Juárez are also favored by the
maquila bosses for their nimble fingers and obedience. Many of the
femicide victims were women employed by maquiladoras.
Thus, as a result of the decade-long history of femicides in
Juárez, large maquilas began to provide bus service to and
from the maquila, but this has not been an effective
preventive security measure.¶ Female Workers of Maquiladoras¶
According to the Organization of American States’s Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights:¶ “The victims of these
crimes have preponderantly
been the state of young women, between 12 and 22 years of
age. Many were students, and most were maquiladora
workers. A number were relative newcomers to Ciudad Juárez who had migrated
from other areas of Mexico. The victims were generally reported missing by their
families, with their bodies found days or months later abandoned in vacant lots,
outlying areas or in the desert. In
most of these cases there were
signs of sexual violence, abuse, torture or in some cases
mutilation.Ӧ At least 18 girls have been identified missing in
the past 14 months. These women share some similar characteristics: pretty
and slender, with dark, shoulder-length hair, at least nine of them vanished while
shopping downtown or looking for work. Most of these women also come from
impoverished families residing in the outskirts of the city. This is not a new
phenomenon; in 2003, Amnesty International issued a report, Intolerable Killings:
10 years of abductions and murders of women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua,
which discussed the pattern of killings and abductions of women in Ciudad Juárez
and the City of Chihuahua. This report concluded that 370 women had been
murdered in Juárez, with about a third having suffering sexual violence before
being murder. Approximately half of the cases have remained unresolved; the
perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice, with most remaining at large, and
with the local authorities seemingly remaining indifferent.¶ Why Have Women
Been Targeted as Murder Victims?¶ Some people see the femicides as a product of
a cultural image of women in Latin America. A
female worker in a
maquiladora is can be looked upon as a form of variable
capital; the labor value of a Mexican maquiladora worker
declines over time because, according to her managers, her
value as a worker is used up after years of endless, exhausting
hours of factory work. Men, on the other hand, are seen as trainable and
intelligent. They are valued higher than female workers due to their alleged ability
to constantly learn and produce value over a protracted period of time. In
essence, women are filtered into the lesser skilled jobs at
these factories and simultaneously are left vulnerable to
sexual harassment and assault.¶ The intrinsic value of a
victim of femicide is usually questioned following her death.
Members of the media and the community alike try to
categorize these women as either “good girls”, fitting the
archetype of a good daughter or worker, or as fallen women,
usually described as prostitutes, sluts, or barmaids. By putting
emphasis on the identity of the women, onlookers seem to
be placing a higher value on the lives of “well-behaved
women” as well as providing a twisted justification for
overlooking or minimize the crimes at hand. For instance, in 1995,
the then-governor of Chihuahua, Francisco Barrio, advised parents to keep an eye
on their daughters and not allow them to go out at night. The implication was that
good girls did not “go out” at night and since the unfortunate victims typically
disappeared during the night, it followed that by objective standards they were
found to not be very good girls. Likewise, when speaking to the family members of
the murdered women, the police often explained the disappearance of the victims
by pointing out “how common it [was] for women to lead double lives.”
Patriarchy causes extinction
Warren and Cady Professor @ Macalester U 96 (Karen,.,
and Duane, Professor @ Hamline, Bringing peace home:
feminism, violence, and nature, 1996, p.12-13)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional
system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c) the
unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United
States, current estimates are that one out of every three or
four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally,
rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sadomassochistic pornography are examples of behaviors
practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the
realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining,
factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are
instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within
patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay
to “rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to
have dominion (that is domination) over the earth, that
nature has only instrumental value that environmental
destruction is the acceptable price we pay for “progress.”
And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural,
righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people
or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to
dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to
international unmanageability. Much of the current
“unmanageability” of contemporary life in patriarchal
societies, (d) is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal
preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that
reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values,
attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life
consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear
proliferation, war, and environmental destruction, and
violence towards women, which many feminists see as the
logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often
only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the
symptoms of dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that
and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them.
When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this
“unmanageability” can be seen for what it is—as a predictable
and thus logical consequence of patriarchy. The theme that
global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are
predictable and logical consequences of sexism and
patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature.
Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a
militarism and warfare are continual features of a
patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal
values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the
context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed
militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and
preserving life on Earth.” Stated in terms of the foregoing
model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the
claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer
meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate
impaired thinking (about women, national and regional
conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors
which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not
impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its
plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of
various woman-nature-peace connections in regional,
national, and global contexts.
IMPACT B: HUMAN RIGHTS
Maquiladoras are a source of inhumane conditions
and violence
Frank and Spehar (Anja K. Frank and Andrea
Spehar, " Women's labour migration in the context
of globalisation" pg online @ http://www2.weedonline.org/uploads/women_s_labour_migration_in
_the_context_of_globalisation.pdf, published by
the WIDE network)
Declining real wages despite higher productivity, ¶ avoiding
profit sharing and requiring overtime, often without
commensurate pay, are wage ¶ issues that reflect a broader
concern. In their heady drive for short-term profits, most ¶ maquiladoras operate
without a social conscience. Health, safety and sexual harassment issues¶ are
endemic to maquiladoras.
Noise, loud and constant; inadequate
ventilation; exposure to ¶ toxic materials;67 and unprotected
work environments under temperature extremes, all behind
¶ locked doors, are examples of inhumane conditions in all
too many maquiladoras. Chronic¶ work-related illnesses and
injuries should be no surprise. Examples include musculoskeletal, ¶ 13respiratory, reproductive, circulatory, hearing
and vision loss and persistent headaches. The ¶ American Friends
Service Committee states thatstress related to work is a major ailment ¶ perhaps
exacerbated due to the high accident rate.¶ 68¶ Data relating to poor health and
safety conditions in maquiladoras are largely gathered through ¶ interviews, usually in
secret and under the seal of confidentiality.
Retribution against whistle ¶
blowers generally is harsh and swift. The result is that
information tends to be in the form of ¶ case studies or
anecdotes. Such data are dismissed by companies and
governments as biased¶ and unscientific. Yet maquiladora owners do
not permit independent health and safety ¶ assessments of their factories and
government officials are not keen to conduct inspections and ¶ fine violators.69
Workers do have strong legal rights to workplace safety, at least on paper. For ¶
example, Mexican laws were written to protect workers from hazardous waste and
unsafe ¶ working conditions in non-discriminatory work environments. The
trouble is that governmental ¶ agencies regard worker safety
laws as optional, at the discretion of maquiladora
management. ¶ An example of a crass violator to Mexican labour laws and the
intent of NAALC is US Breed ¶ Technologies. Numerous complaints failed
to get the Mexican government to implement its ¶ health and
safety laws at Breed’s Auto Trim plant in Matamorus and Custom Trim factory in
¶ Valle Hermoso.
More than 20 complaints were filed to the US NOA against Breed
between ¶ 1994 and May 2002. “Not a single one has produced significant results,
aside from a bit of ¶ publicity.”70 A US agency that was assigned to investigate the
charges against Breed confirmed ¶ unsafe and unhealthy working conditions in
violation to Mexican law.71 Yet
the US Secretary of ¶ Labor has
refused to take action. Her stonewalling is legally allowed,
however morally ¶ repugnant. Cases brought into the NAALC system have
no deadlines for which some action ¶ must be taken or judgement made. ¶ As with
health and safety, sexual
harassment is another abuse of human
rights largely ignored in ¶ maquiladoras. While forced
pregnancy tests are violations of the law, other abusive
practices¶ may not be. The problem is compounded in Mexican factories
because sexual harassment is not ¶ prohibited by law.72
Investigative reporter Debbie Nathan maintains that a
climate of sexism is¶ promoted. Women wear different
coloured uniforms than men. Supervisors freely flirt, fondle ¶
and ask younger, single women for dates. More attractive
workers are encouraged to compete ¶ in Miss Maquiladora
beauty contests. “Sexualization allies workers with
management and ¶ alienates them from one another . . .
(where) the job becomes a fantasy world.”73¶
Maquiladora reform sets an international standard
for worker rights
Joe Bandy 2002 Department of Sociology/Anthropology,
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine ‘So What Is to Be
Done?:Maquila Justice Movements, Transnational Solidarity,
and Dynamics of Resistance’
http://www.academia.edu/1353488/So_What_Is_To_Be_Don
e_Maquila_Justice_Movements_Transnational_Solidarity_An
d_Dynamics_Of_Resistance
Endeavors of labor networks to empower maquila workers
have had mixed results. Given the repression they face, their
limited resources, and continuing internal conflicts, the very
survival of cross-border labor networks for maquila justice
has been a positive result. Beyond survival, however, some
episodes of labor conflict have resulted in changes that
workers have regarded as progressive. There have been
corporatere forms to toxic dumping and abusive labor
relations; workers have received precedent-setting legal
verdicts and settlements in both national and international
tribunals ; labor rights education has informed countless
citizens; and as we will see, workers have had qualified
successes in unionization and collective bargaining. In these
efforts, coalition has functioned to magnify the strengths of
individual organizations, and each success has fortified
hopes in a growing transnational civil society that can help
to institute a more democratic form of development. In
many instances, however, workers’ goals have not been
achieved and the hopes of regulating transnational capital are
dim. In these cases, corporations have fired and intimidated
activists; Mexican government leaders and official unions
have obstructed independent unionization and harassed
workers; activists have had limited resources to devote to
organizing; or workers’ coalitions have conflicted over
strategy, organizational development, or identity issues such
as nationality, disrupting their unity and power. Indeed, at this
moment in history, the forces of economic liberalization
appear far stronger than those of democratic regulation,
prompting social movements worldwide to ask, not unlike
Lenin (1929), what is to be done?To this question there may
be as many answers as there are movements. Yet, among
labor organizations, each episode of conflict with
corporations and government has facilitated the
development of common, coordinated strategies of
resistance. To understand the most current phase of labor
movement activism and the power dynamics between labor
and capital in the maquilas, it will be helpful to discuss two of
the most recent and prominent cases of labor mobilizations in
the maquilas – that at the HanYoung plant in Tijuana, Baja
California from 1997 to 1999, and that against the¶ ¶
3Kukdong/Mexmode maquila in Atlixco, Puebla from 2000 to
2002. Clearly, there have been many precedent-setting labor
struggles in Mexican maquilas since the late 1970sthat could
be discussed here – Solidev, Sony, ALCOA, GE, Maxiswitch, or
Duro – yet Han Young and Kukdong are arguably the most
instructive. Each movement was able to achieve new
precedents of unionization, one government recognition, the
other a labor contract. Further, each demonstrates slightly
different paradigms of resistance to export processing, with
distinct strategic opportunities, regional influences, and
outcomes. HanYoung represents at once one of the greatest
successes and failures of maquila labo rmovements, while
many regard that of Kukdong/Mexmode to be a new model
for laborinternationalism in North America. Thus, a
comparative analysis of these cases willprovide insights into
the industrial conflict in the maquila sector. This discussion is
grounded in ten extended (2-3 hour) interviews of the lead
activists and workers participating in each conflict, conducted
during 1997-8 for the Han Young case and during 2001 for
Kukdong. Additionally, government reports and movement
documents –communiqués, monitoring reports, action alerts,
protest faxes/letters, media packages,etc. – will be discussed.
Lastly, this research was conducted as part of a much larger
study of U.S.-Mexico labor coalitions involving over onehundred interviews with activists, maquila managers, and
government officials, as well as over six years of selective
participation in workers’ movements, providing many other
relevant insights. Driving Hyundai to the Brink: The Case of
Han Young
The continued progression of human rights is key
to prevent nuclear war and environmental
degradation
Sohn 82 (Louis Sohn, emeritus professor of int’l law at
Harvard, professor of international law at the University of
Georgia, Fall 1982, American University Law Review, 32 Am.
U.L. Rev. 1, p. 62-4)
Whatever the merits of the contentions of those who
disparage the new rights, two points must be made; one
relates to the interdependence of all human rights, the other
concerns the present importance of these rights. With respect
to the first point, it must be noted that various international
institutions have specially emphasized the interdependence,
complementarity, and indivisibility of human rights. By 1968,
the Teheran International Conference on Human Rights had
already stated in its Declaration that [s]ince human rights and
fundamental freedoms are indivisible, the full realization of
civil and political rights without the enjoyment of economic,
social and cultural rights, is impossible. The achievement of
lasting progress in the implementation of human rights is
dependent on sound and effective national and international
policies of economic development. In a similar spirit the
crucial 1977 General Assembly Resolution 32/130 on
alternative approaches to the improvement of United Nations
effectiveness in promoting human rights noted, inter alia: (a)
All human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible
and interdependent; equal attention and urgent
consideration should be given to the implementation,
promotion and protection of both civil and political, and
economic, social and cultural rights; (d) Consequently,
human rights questions should be examined globally, taking
into account both the overall context of the various societies
in which they present themselves, as well as the need for the
promotion of the full dignity of the human person and the
development and well-being of the society . . . . It should not
surprise anyone if the truth about the current relevance of
the new human rights were somewhere between the two
extreme views. Like the economic, social, and cultural rights,
the new rights, even if not immediately attainable, establish
new goals that can be achieved progressively, by one
laborious step after another. They are vast and
overwhelming, but so are our problems. The damage to
humanity that might be inflicted by a nuclear war or an
environmental catastrophe is almost beyond
comprehension; we need to grasp any tool that is available
to stem an engulfing tide that is of horrifying proportions.
Perhaps these new concepts can be the equivalent of the
Dutch boy's finger that at the last minute plugged the hole in
the dike. We are in a desperate situation; we need to be
brave. As Virgil said, "audentes fortuna juvat": fortune helps
the daring. In the field of human rights we have had two
successful revolutions; we should have the courage to begin a
third.
US incorporation of customary international law
prevents extinction
Rhonda Copelon, Professor of Law and Director of the
International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic, 1999, 3
N.Y. City L. Rev. 59, p. L/N
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War
despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the international
arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the
superiority [*72] of the U.S. version of rights, to rebuild
popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and
jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in the face
of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by
official and private actors, globalization of the market
economy, and military and environmental depredation, the
human rights framework is gaining new force and new
dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of
people in different parts of the world, particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who
understand the protection of human rights as a matter of
individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also
emerging is a notion of third-generation rights, encompassing
collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state
basis and that call for new mechanisms of accountability,
particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights
include human-centered sustainable development,
environmental protection, peace, and security. 38 Given the
poverty and inequality in the United States as well as our
role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human
rights framework to bear on both domestic and foreign
policy.
Econ
Contention (): Econ
Mexico is on track to a rebounding economy,
needed reforms still hamper its growth
Villarreal, U.S Mexican Relations 2012 (U.S.-Mexico
Economic Relations:
Trends, Issues, and Implications, M. Angeles Villarreal,
Specialist in International Trade and Finance,
August 9, 2012,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32934.pdf) D.R
¶ The Mexican economy grew by 3.9% in 2011 and is
expected to grow by 3.7% in 2012 and 3.8% ¶ in 2013.25 The
economy has recovered since 2009, when the global
financial crisis, and the ¶ subsequent downturn in the U.S.
economy, resulted in the sharpest economic contraction in
the ¶ Mexican economy in 20 years. Mexico’s economy is
estimated to have contracted by 6.6% in ¶ 2009, while the
Mexican peso depreciated against the dollar by 25%.26
Trends in Mexico’s GDP ¶ growth generally follow U.S.
economic trends, as shown in Figure 2. Mexico experienced
the ¶ deepest recession in the Latin America region following
the crisis. This is largely due to its high ¶ dependence on
manufacturing exports to the United States, though other
factors have also ¶ contributed. Other Latin American
countries experienced negative economic consequences from
¶ the global financial crisis, but to a lesser extent. ¶ Mexico
outperformed Brazil in economic growth in 2011 (3.9%
compared to 2.7%) and is ¶ forecast to do the same in 2012.
The Economist Intelligence Unit reports that Mexico’s sound
¶ macroeconomic fundamentals, solid banking sector, and
competitive export sector are helping ¶ Mexico’s economy
and its ability to weather external conditions. However,
Mexico’s economic ¶ growth has been limited by a need for
structural reforms in the labor , education, energy, and fiscal
¶ sectors.
Maquiladoras are slowly relocating to China
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
The number of maquiladoras dramatically increased in
Mexico in the 1980’s as the Mexican economy shifted to a
near-complete focus on export. With the advent of NAFTA,
there was a sharp rise in the number of maquiladoras in the
1990’s, with the total reaching over 3000 in the following
decade.10 NAFTA changed the way Mexico treated imports
from countries other than the United States and Canada.
Under NAFTA rules (specifically Article 303), only raw
materials imported from NAFTA countries receive the benefit
of no import taxes. Foreign businesses who use Mexican
maquiladoras to fabricate products for import into the U.S. do
not receive this benefit.11 The number of maquiladora
factories stayed relatively stable until the economic
downturn in 2008, when many maquiladoras closed and
unemployment in the Mexican northern states rose
dramatically.12 In Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua and Tijuana, Baja,
two cities with major numbers of export assembly plants,
unemployment rose over 21% between 2007 and 2009.13
There are indications that the maquiladoras are slightly
rebounding, but these data are difficult to calculate because
the Mexican government now combines maquiladoras data
along with other manufacture-for-export entities under an
umbrella program called IMMEX.14 In the last decade, China
has appeared on the scene as a competitor to the
maquiladoras, by significantly undercutting Mexican labor
costs, boosting productivity, and providing similar “just in
time” delivery costs.15 Within the last ten years, many
businesses have relocated plants from Mexico to Asia. For
example, Philips North America shut down a computer screen
assembly plant in Juarez and moved the operation to Suzhou,
China, and Canon closed an aging inkjet printer factory near
the U.S. border and moved its operations to Southeast Asia.16
Maquiladoras are key to the Mexican Economy
-Jobs, Exports, Leadership Expertise,Foreign Exchange
Shah (Mitali, Mount Holoyke College, "Pros of
maquiladoras" pg online @
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~shah20m/classweb/
pros.html)
Maquiladoras employ over 900,000 people who would
otherwise be unemployed. The rate of unemployment is
lower along the border than it is anywhere else in Mexico.
Maquiladoras are leading the country to unrestrained growth. Exports from
maquiladoras make up 50% of all exports from Mexico.
When the rest of Mexico was suffering from recession in the
80’s, the border regions earned enough foreign exchange to
stay afloat. Additionally, during the currency crisis of 1994, as
other businesses went bankrupt, the maquiladora industry boomed.
Mexico has made incredible strides over the past few decades to improve their
reputation as a first class economy. The World Bank ranks Mexico with the 12th
largest Gross Domestic Product in the world, and with a population of over 100
million people, it has the 3rd largest per capita income in Latin America. Additionally,
maquiladoras have helped build a network of successful
Mexican businessmen who are skilled in managing multinational companies, allowing them to take charge.
Maquiladoras ensure that Mexico will have a firm position in
the global economy.
Collapses the US and global economy.
Enrique Rangel, Monterrey Bureau, November 28, 1995, The Dallas Morning
News, “Pressure on the Peso”
All year long, thousands
of foreign investors have nervously watched
Mexico’s volatile financial markets as the Clinton administration and
congressional leaders debated the pros and cons of bailing out a battered currency.
With the exception of 1982 - when Mexico defaulted on its foreign debt and a
handful of giant New York banks worried they would lose billions of dollars in loans few people abroad ever cared about a weak peso. But now it’s different, experts say.
This time, the world
is keeping a close eye on Mexico’s unfolding
financial crisis for one simple reason: Mexico is a major
international player. If its economy were to collapse, it would
drag down a few other countries and thousands of foreign
investors. If recovery is prolonged, the world economy will
feel the slowdown. “It took a peso devaluation so that other
countries could notice the key role that Mexico plays in
today’s global economy,” said economist Victor Lpez Villafane of
the Monterrey Institute of Technology. “I hate to say it, but if
Mexico were to default on its debts, that would trigger an
international financial collapse” not seen since the Great
Depression, said Dr. Lpez, who has conducted comparative
studies of the Mexican economy and the economies of some
Asian and Latin American countries. “That’s why it’s in the best
interests of the United States and the industrialized world to help Mexico
weather its economic crisis,” he said. The crisis began last December when
the Mexican government devalued the currency. Last March, after weeks of debate,
President Clinton, the International Monetary Fund and a handful of other countries
and international agencies put together a $ 53 billion rescue package for Mexico. But
despite the help - $ 20 billion in guarantee loans from the United States - Mexico’s
financial markets have been volatile for most of the year. The peso is now trading at
about 7.70 to the dollar, after falling to an all-time low of 8.30 to the dollar Nov. 9.
The road has been bumpy, and that has made many - particularly U.S. investors nervous. No
country understands better the importance of
Mexico to the global economy than the United States, said Jorge
Gonzlez Dvila, an economist at Trinity University in San Antonio.
“Despite the rhetoric that you hear in Washington, I think that most people agree even those who oppose any aid to Mexico - that when
Mexico sneezes,
everybody catches a cold,” Mr. Gonzlez said. “That’s why nowadays any talk
of aid to Mexico or trade with Mexico gets a lot of attention,” he said. Most
economists, analysts and business leaders on both sides of the border agree that the
biggest impact abroad of a prolonged Mexican fiscal crisis may
be on the U.S. economy, especially in Texas and in cities bordering Mexico.
Economic crisis causes war
Royal, 2010, (Director of the DOD’s Cooperative Threat
Reduction Program, 10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of
Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of
Defense, 2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling
and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War
and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed.
Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may
increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science
literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to
the impact of economic decline and the security and defence
behaviour of interdependent slates. Research in this vein has
been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels.
Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic
level. Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (19%)
work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the
global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a preeminent power and the often bloody transition from one preeminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such
as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative
power (sec also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about
power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation
(Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive
environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to
challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately. Pollins
(1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership
cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers,
although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic
conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level.
Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future
expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions
and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to
gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future
trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for
difficult lo replace items such as energy resources, [lie likelihood for conflict
increases. as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources.
Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its
own or because il triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third,
others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed
conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation
between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of
economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict
and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn
internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a
recession lends lo amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts
self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & I less. 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also
been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg. Hess. &
Wccrapana. 2004). which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external
tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a silting government.
"Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic
decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military
conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and
Blomberg. Mess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that
economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997),
Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards
diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to
the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed
from office due to lack of domestic support. DcRoucn (2000) has provided evidence
showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus
weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force.
In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration
with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science
scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and
national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed
conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves
more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link
economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such
as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to focus
on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically
consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the
view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.
Mexican collapse causes total U.S. withdrawal from
the international system
Westhawk 08 private investor. Formerly, the global
research director and portfolio manager for a large, private,
U.S.-based investment firm. Former U.S. Marine Corps officer:
infantry company commander, artillery battalion staff officer
December 21, 2008, "Now that would change everything,"
http://westhawk.blogspot.com/2008/12/now-that-wouldchange-everything.html)
Yes, the “rapid collapse” of Mexico would change everything
with respect to the global security environment. Such a
collapse would have enormous humanitarian, constitutional,
economic, cultural, and security implications for the U.S. It
would seem the U.S. federal government, indeed American
society at large, would have little ability to focus serious
attention on much else in the world. The hypothetical
collapse of Pakistan is a scenario that has already been well
discussed. In the worst case, the U.S. would be able to isolate
itself from most effects emanating from south Asia. However,
there would be no running from a Mexican collapse.
Hegemony prevents multiple nuclear conflicts
Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13
(Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth
College, John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of
Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the
Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs, William C. Wohlforth is the
Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government
at Dartmouth College “Don’t Come Home America: The Case
Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3
(Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the
emergence of a far more dangerous global security
environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas
presence gives it the leverage to restrain
partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more
important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with
aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating
expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to
adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security
dilemmas. The contention that engaged
effects of anarchy
U.S. power dampens the
baleful
is consistent with influential variants of realist theory.
Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge
absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John
Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous
multipolar regions replete with security
competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated
preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional
hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment
advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are
complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are
not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention
of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a
different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate
hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security
setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is
impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for
retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive
realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-
generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists
maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and
an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent,
mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully
without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship,
particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point
to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent
or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that
might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise.
Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal.
Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a
return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many
doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense
cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result
might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could
be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the
1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders
might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside
rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a
substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing
toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably
Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that
would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding
the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the
principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely
to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could
stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both
South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only
constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of
scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of
the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s
optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much
dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state
preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism
vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia
rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with
security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the
homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as
offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive
Burgeoning research across the social and
other sciences, however, undermines that core
assumption: states have preferences not only for
security but also for prestige, status, and other aims,
relative to defense.
and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they
define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and
varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may
nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this
is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia
is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences
to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly
knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant
deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions.
We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship.
Offensive realism predicts that
pacifier
will yield
complete with
either a
the withdrawal of
competitive
regional
associated insecurity, arms racing,
nuclear proliferation, and
the
America n
multipolarity
crisis instability,
the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which
may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case
would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional
great
power war ). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to
focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas
in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United
States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but
at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities
of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the
pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be
rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of
conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher
levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher
levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive
regional
proxy wars and arming of client states —all of which
would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military
power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed
proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and
Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that
proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they
would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth
Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that
nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic
terms, the debate over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up.
Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security
preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic.
Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome
organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared
neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence
in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to
twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by
analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—
including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will
not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear
powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis
that could
spin out of control
dynamics”
is also higher as the number of nuclear
powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear
leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet
more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest
faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that
U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between
retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the
optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional
hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing:
stay over the horizon and “pass the buck” to local powers to do the dangerous work of
counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore
balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a
credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the
Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century. The problem is that China’s rise puts the
possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to
long term. As Mearsheimer notes, “The United States will have to play a key role in
countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by
themselves.” 81 Therefore, unless China’s rise stalls, “the United States is likely to act
toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold
War.” 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would
compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to
maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive
military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and
Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia— just what the United
States is doing. 83 In sum,
the argument that U.S.
commitments are unnecessary
for peace
security
is countered by a
lot of scholarship , including highly influential realist scholarship. In
addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is
weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well
as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the
savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching between offshore and
onshore balancing could well be difªcult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the
arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which
retrenchment misses the
underlying
the case for
logic of
the
deep
engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active
management, the United States lowers security
competition in the world’s key regions, thereby preventing the
emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new
military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping
up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top
of all this, the United States’ formidable military machine may deter entry by
potential rivals. Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP
are at historical lows, and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking
to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful
to avoid attracting the “focused enmity” of the United States. 84 All of the world’s
most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America’s alliance system of more than sixty
countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap
between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures
growing rather than shrinking. 85
Solvency
U.S. financial assistance improves maquiladoras
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
¶ First of all, the United States government must encourage
American companies to ¶ continue business with Mexican
companies in the northern border states in order to
guarantee ¶ economic stability and help the maquiladoras
transform into more complex entities. The ¶ President should
work with the Secretary of Commerce and the U.S. Trade
Representative to ¶ develop a program by which U.S.
companies are provided fiscal motivation to continue ¶
working with Mexican maquiladoras, instead of shifting their
assembly operations to Asia. ¶ The incentives will most likely
be in the form of tax benefits and should be tied to ¶
relationships with Mexican maquiladoras that meet strict
criteria. Because this is connected ¶ to altering the tax code,
Congress must pass related legislation. The two most
important ¶ criteria for the maquiladoras associated with this
program are that they pay a living wage to ¶ their local
employees and that they are engaged in a program designed
to increase the ¶ complexity of their production. These
factories will be able to pay better wages because of ¶ the
continued investment from U.S. companies who will receive
the tax benefit, and these ¶ wages will help stabilize the local
economy. The U.S. Department of Commerce can assist ¶ the
Government of Mexico with concrete plans to improve the
maquiladoras, in concert with ¶ current Mexican goals to
revitalize its export industry through increased government
¶
financing.42 Because the Mexican Government has
already come to the realization that the ¶ simple assembly
model must evolve into something more technologically
complex, these ¶ plans can quickly be organized. 43 In order
to effectively advocate this course of action, the ¶ focus should
be placed on the stimulation of the U.S. economy through tax
relief to ¶ American companies and the need to preserve a
secure environment along the border.
Incentives promote labor standards
Pellicer (Claudia, "Trade Linkage policy applied: U.s.
latin america" pg online @
http://www.nyu.edu/clubs/jpia.club/PDF/S10_Pell
icer.pdf)
Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s commentary affirms that as far
as the promotion of labor standards
is concerned, both the “American model of arms’ length
regulation of business by government” and the ¶ “Northeast
Asian model of formulation of unitary trade and industrial
policy by a bureaucracy” have ¶ proven unsuitable (Reddy
and Barry, 2008; p. 139). As outlined in the Reddy-Barry
proposal, the merits ¶ of trade linkage are that—in exchange
for increased access to developed-countries’ markets and
their ¶ technologies— developing countries would rapidly
conform to ILO labor standards. In order to incentivize ¶
linkage and create the necessary leverage necessary to
enforce labor standards, more-developed countries ¶ such
as the U.S ., Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, or Chile would have
to increase or tailor the financial support ¶ they currently
provide to less-developed countries of the region. Otherwise,
given the global trend of ¶ trade liberalization, less-developed
countries might not effectively promote most or perhaps any
of these ¶ standards. In broad terms, this issue has become
particularly important in view of labor rights violations in ¶
Colombia, Mexico, and Peru and regarding the development
and track record of maquiladoras just South ¶ of the U.S.
border.
The Norms program effectively regulates workers
rights and environmental issues
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
¶ In August of 2003, the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights adopted draft Norms on the Responsibilities
of Transnational Corporations and Other Business
Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights (Norms).195 The
Norms state that within their respective spheres of activity
and influence, transnational corporations have the obligation
to “promote, secure the fulfillment of, respect, ensure
respect of, and protect human rights recognized in
international as well as national law.”196 In addition to
general human rights regarding the right to equal
opportunity197 and the right to the security of persons,198
the Norms require transnational ¶ corporations to recognize
and uphold workers’ rights. In regard to the rights of workers,
the Norms obligate transnational corporations to provide a
safe and healthy working environment,199to pay workers at
a level “that ensures an adequate standard of living for them
and their families,”200 and to recognize the right of workers
to associate and to bargain collectively without outside
interference.201There are three general means by which the
provisions of the Norms are to be implemented.
Transnational corporations are to ¶ “adopt, disseminate, and
implement internal rules of operation” that comply with the
Norms.202 These corporations are also subject to periodic
monitoring and verification by the United Nations and its
existing monitoring bodies.203 Additionally, nation-states
are expected to create “and reinforce the necessary legal
and administrative framework for ensuring” corporate
compliance with the Norms.204 Towards this end, the UN
Human Rights Commission also instructs that the Norms be
applied by national and international tribunals, pursuant to
national and international law.205
The plan will be modeled globally
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
While they are not yet binding international law, the Norms
are evidence of a widely accepted international contention
that may soon take the form of a binding, jus cogens
obligation.206 The emergence of resolutions such as the
Norms, which oblige transnational corporations to comply
with international human rights regulations, seems to bode
well for the future of workers’ rights in Mexico’s maquiladora
sector. By holding these corporations accountable,
regardless of the developing nation in which they choose to
establish an assembly plant, enforceable international
declarations and conventions deny corporations the ability
to “race to the bottom” in pursuit of less stringent labor and
human rights standards. If the corporations themselves are
the focus of international regulation, it will not matter
where they choose to incorporate, as their international erga
omnes207obligations will be due the entire world over.
2AC Cards
Addons
Bio-Terror
Mexican economic decline causes a flood of
refugees, resulting in terrorism.
Michael Brown 9, Undersecretary of Emergency
Preparedness and Response in the Department of Homeland
Security, “Border Control: Collapse of Mexico Is A Homeland
Security & National Security Issue,”
1/14, http://michaelbrowntoday.com/journal/2009/1/15/bor
der-control-collapse-of-mexico-is-a-homeland-securitynat.html
By failing to secure the borders and control
immigration, we have opened ourselves up to a
frightening scenario. The United States could
face a flood of refugees from Mexico if it were
to collapse, overwhelming state and local
governments along the U.S.-Mexico
border. During a time of economic duress, the
costs would be overwhelming and would
simply add to the already burgeoning costs at
the federal level. Immigration and border control never was nor
should it ever be about racism. Immigration and border control are
national security and homeland security issues. Sleeper cells
from numerous terrorist groups could, and
probably already have, infiltrated the United States, just
laying in wait to attack at an appropriately vulnerable time.
US-Mexican border terrorism results in bioterror
attacks
Ken Timmerman 10, Newsmax correspondent, “FBI
Director Mueller: Al-Qaida Still Wants Nuclear Bomb,” 3/18,
http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/mueller-fbi-alqaidanuclear/2010/03/18/id/353169
FBI Director Robert Mueller warned
Congress on Wednesday of ongoing al-Qaida
efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction
to attack the United States. “Al-Qaida remains
committed to its goal of conducting attacks
inside the United States,” Mueller told a House
appropriations subcommittee. “Further, al-Qaida’s continued
efforts to access chemical, biological,
radiological, or nuclear material pose a
serious threat to the United States.” To accomplish its
goals of new attacks on the American homeland, al-Qaida “seeks
to infiltrate overseas operatives who have no
known nexus to terrorism into the United
States using both legal and illegal methods of
entry,” Mueller said. In February, Sheikh Abdullah al-Nasifi, a
known al-Qaida recruiter in Kuwait, boasted on al
Jazeera television that Mexico’s border with the United
States was the ideal infiltration point for terrorists
seeking to attack America. “Four pounds of
anthrax – in a suitcase this big – carried by a fighter
through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S., are
guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a
single hour if it is properly spread in
population centers there,” al-Nasifi said.
Bioterror leads to extinction
Anders Sandberg 8, is a James Martin Research Fellow at
the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University; Jason
G. Matheny, PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management
at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and
special consultant to the Center for Biosecurity at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Milan M. Ćirković,
senior research associate at the Astronomical Observatory of
Belgrade and assistant professor of physics at the University
of Novi Sad in Serbia and Montenegro, 9/8/8, “How can we
reduce the risk of human extinction?,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists,http://www.thebulletin.org/webedition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-of-humanextinction
The risks from anthropogenic hazards appear at present larger than those from
natural ones. Although great progress has been made in reducing the number of
nuclear weapons in the world, humanity
is still threatened
by the possibility of a global thermonuclear war and a
resulting nuclear winter. We may face even greater
risks from emerging technologies. Advances
in synthetic biology might make it possible to
engineer pathogens capable of extinction-level
pandemics. The knowledge, equipment, and materials needed to engineer
pathogens are more accessible than those needed to build nuclear weapons.
And unlike
other weapons, pathogens are selfreplicating, allowing a small arsenal to
become exponentially destructive. Pathogens have been
implicated in the extinctions of many wild species. Although most
pandemics "fade out" by reducing the density of susceptible
populations, pathogens with wide host ranges in multiple species can reach even
isolated individuals. The intentional or unintentional release
of engineered
pathogens with high transmissibility, latency, and
be capable of
causing human extinction. While such an event seems unlikely
lethality might
today, the likelihood may increase as biotechnologies continue to improve at a rate
rivaling Moore's Law.
Air Pollution
Water Pollution
Maquiladoras release toxic chemicals into river
water
Bullard, ’02 (Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Edmund Asa Ware Distinguished
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at
Clark Atlanta University, leader in environmental justice; “POVERTY, POLLUTION AND
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITIES “; 11/22/2002; http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html)
U.S.-Mexico Border Ecology. The conditions
surrounding the more
than 1,900 maquiladoras, assembly plants operated by American,
Japanese, and other foreign countries, located along the 2,000-mile
U.S.-Mexico border may further exacerbate the waste trade.
The industrial plants use cheap Mexican labor to assemble
imported components and raw material and then ship finished
products back to the United States. Over a half million Mexican
workers are employed in the maquiladoras.¶ All along the
Lower Rio Grande River Valley maquiladoras dump their
toxic wastes into the river, from which 95 percent of the
region's residents get their drinking water. [22] In the border cities
of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoras, Mexico, the rate of anencephaly--babies born without brains---is four times the national
average. Affected families filed lawsuits against 88 of the area's 100
maquiladoras for exposing the community to xylene, a
cleaning solvent that can cause brain hemorrhages, and lung
and kidney damage.¶ The Mexican environmental regulatory
agency is understaffed and ill-equipped to adequately
enforce its laws. Many of the Mexican border towns have now become cities
with skyscrapers and freeways. More important, the "brown pallor of these
southwestern skies has become a major health hazards." [23]¶
That destroys the Mexican economy.
Page and Rabinowitz, 93 (G. William, Ph.D., professor in
the Department of Planning, University of Buffalo, the State
University of New York *AND Harvey, former professor,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Autumn 1993,
“Groundwater contamination: Its effects on property values
and cities,” American Planning Association, Journal of the
American Planning Association Volume 59, Issue 4, ProQuest,
Hensel)
Toxic chemical contamination of groundwater is a national
problem. Groundwater contamination is the most serious
problem at the majority of sites in the federal government's
$15.2 billion Superfund program (U.S. Government
Accounting Office 1991b). The program, which deals with the
worst cases of contamination, as identified by the national
priorities list, has insufficient funds to clean up all
contamination; thus, the 1,200 Superfund sites are only a
small portion of the contaminated sites in the United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which operates
the Superfund, sets the standards for levels of contamination.
At the local level, where remediation is conducted,
groundwater contamination is having significant impacts on
property markets and on local government. Groundwater
contamination and other forms of pollution impose many
costs on society. Extensive research has measured the
negative externalities of various types of pollution, but little
has been done to determine the costs resulting from the
contamination of groundwater with toxic chemicals.
Groundwater supplies about 40 percent of the U.S.
population with drinking water, is used extensively by
agriculture and industry, and is critical to sensitive surface
water ecosystems. Contaminated groundwater is extremely
expensive and difficult to clean up. Toxic chemical
contamination in groundwater is an increasingly serious
problem for local government, which is responsible for
protecting the public health, the environment, and the tax
base, which pays for government services, and for stimulating
local economic development. Local governments often have
to take remedial action to clean up groundwater because the
polluter cannot be identified or found legally liable. The
health risks, high costs of remedial action to clean up
groundwater contamination, and the legal liability issues
create serious financial problems and moral dilemmas for
municipalities. Policy planners at all levels of government
must be aware of the full social and environmental costs of
groundwater contamination to be able to create policies that
efficiently allocate resources for remediation incentives and
to be able to devise adequate penalties to deter sufficiently
potential polluters. Property owners must also be aware of
the full costs of groundwater contamination as well as of their
own liability for such contamination. Under EPA policy,
current owners of property may be liable even if they did not
cause the pollution. Mortgagees, lessees, and managers of
property are also often drawn into the net of potentially
responsible parties (PRPs) who could be found liable for
contamination. The nature of groundwater flows complicates
the contamination issue. Toxic chemicals in groundwater are
not static; they move in a plume of contamination.
Contaminants degrade much less efficiently in groundwater
than in surface waters. Neither the direction nor the rate of
movement of plumes of toxic chemicals in groundwater is
predictable without a thorough and costly hydrogeological
investigation; and even the most thorough investigations
may produce inaccurate predictions about contamination
movement because of the complexity of and the difficulties
in monitoring groundwater systems. The plume of
contaminated groundwater will continue to flow and may
pollute municipal water supply wells or private wells in the
same or nearby communities, or it may discharge into
wetlands, rivers, lakes, or coastal waters. Owners of property
near sites containing contamination also should know if real
or perceived concerns about contamination will affect the
value of their property.
Generic Stuff
Solvency
While economic problems are fixable, a lack of
funding shouldn’t get in the way of rights
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
While it is undeniable that the economic conditions in Mexico
complicate the matter of enforcing and upholding labor
rights, women’s rights, and human rights in general, these
conditions negate neither the obligation nor the ability of
the Mexican government to do so. In order to appreciate the
ability of the Mexican government to enforce such rights in
the face of harsh economic conditions, one must understand
the difference between positive and negative rights. Positive
rights are those rights that a state has an affirmative duty to
“respect, protect, and fulfill.”191 With regard to positive
rights, the key inquiry is whether the state is affirmatively
acting to meet its obligations. Negative rights can be
described as prohibitions against state interference.192 For
negative rights, the key inquiry is whether the state is leaving
its citizens alone to exercise their rights.193 In the context of
maquiladoras, an example of a positive right which the
Mexican government owes to its workers is the protection
against occupational safety hazards and dangerous work
environments. An example of a negative right in this context is
the prohibition against government interference with labor
unions. The poor condition of the Mexican economy may
make it difficult for the government to provide regulatory
schemes that enforce the positive rights of its workers,194
but that does not preclude the government’s recognition of
its workers’ negative rights. While developing a social or
administrative network to regulate occupational safety issues
may create significant costs for the government, simply
limiting its own involvement in independent labor unions
requires the government to shoulder no conspicuous financial
burden. In fact, limiting its involvement in this aspect of the
private sector may even reduce the operating and
administrative costs of the Mexican government. Thus, a
claim of economic hardship will not excuse the Mexican
government from recognizing such negative rights owed to
its workforce. But what about the Mexican government’s fear
of losing jobs to other developing nations? What about the
“race to the bottom?” It certainly is conceivable that holding
Mexico to higher labor standards than other developing
nations could result in multinational corporations leaving
Mexico in search of less stringent policies. However, an
international regulatory scheme that focuses on nation-states
is not the only option.
Enforcement of the Norms Program
Weissbrodt et. Al ‘3 [David Weissbrodt and Muria Kruger;
Professor David S. Weissbrodt is a distinguished and widely
published scholar of international human rights law. He
teaches international human rights law, administrative law,
immigration law, and torts. October 2003,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3133689.pdf “Norms on
the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other
Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”, KP]
The Norms as adopted are not a voluntary initiative of
corporate social responsibility. The ¶ many implementation
provisions show that they amount to more than aspirational
state- ¶ ments of desired conduct. Further, the SubCommission's Resolution 2003/16 called for the ¶ creation of
a mechanism for NGOs and others to submit information
about businesses that are ¶ not meeting the minimum
standards of the Norms. The nonvoluntary nature of the
Norms ¶ therefore goes beyond the voluntary guidelines
found in the UN Global Compact, the ILO ¶ Tripartite
Declaration, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational
Enterprises. ¶ Although not voluntary, the Norms are not a
treaty, either. Treaties constitute the primary ¶ sources of
international human rights law. The UN Charter is both the
most prominent treaty ¶ and the repository of seminal human
rights provisions in Articles 1, 55, and 56. The United ¶ Nations
has further codified and more specifically defined
international human rights law in ¶ subsequent treaties, which
impose legal obligations on those nations that are party to
them. ¶ The legal authority of the Norms derives principally
from their sources in treaties and cus- ¶ tomary international
law, as a restatement of international legal principles
applicable to ¶ companies.7 The United Nations has
promulgated dozens of declarations, codes, rules, guide- ¶
lines, principles, resolutions, and other instruments, in
addition to treaties, that interpret the ¶ general human rights
obligations of member states under Articles 55 and 56 of the
Charter ¶ and may reflect customary international law. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights ¶ is the most
prominent of those instruments; it not only serves as an
authoritative, compre- ¶ hensive, and nearly
contemporaneous interpretation of the human rights
obligations under ¶ the Charter, but also contains provisions
¶
that have been recognized as reflective of custom- ¶ ary
international law.7
Lack of enforcement right now is due to lack of
incentives
http://en.maquilasolidarity.org/FAQ/sweatshops
Yes. Governments should regulate good working conditions
and enforce those regulations. Actually, many garmentproducing nations have good legislation in this regard. The
problem is that it isn't enforced properly. A major reason is
that many countries where garments and sportswear are
produced try to create an environment that is attractive to
foreign investment. Incentives for foreign investors include
not only low wages and taxes, but also the suspension of
certain workplace and environmental regulations. If a
government does attempt to strictly enforce these
regulations, many investors will quickly pack their bags for
another country that is even less strict and is more
accommodating. As a result, all these countries compete
against one another in a "race to the bottom." Bad working
conditions are an international problem that will not be
solved on a national level alone. But it's also wrong to
assume that governments have absolutely no control over
foreign investments. And not all companies pack up and
leave at the first signs of government regulations. So it is
valuable to encourage governments to pressure companies
to take responsibility for their labour policies and ensure
compliance.
What norms entails
University of Minnesota ‘03[Commentary on the Norms
on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporation and
Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, U.N.
Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/38/Rev.2 (2003).
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/links/commentaryAug2003.html, KP]
(a)
Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall respect the right to a clean and healthy
environment
in the light of the relationship between the environment and
human rights; concerns for intergenerational equity; internationally recognized
environmental standards, for example
with regard to air pollution,
water pollution, land use, biodiversity and hazardous
wastes; and the wider goal of sustainable development,
that is, development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs. (b) Transnational corporations and
other business enterprises shall be responsible for the
environmental and human health impact of all of their
activities, including any products or services they introduce into commerce, such
as packaging, transportation and by-products of the manufacturing process. (c)
Consistent with paragraph 16 (i), in decision-making processes and on a periodic basis
(preferably annually or biannually), transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall assess the impact of their activities on the environment and human
health including impacts from siting decisions, natural resource extraction activities,
the production and sale of products or services, and the generation, storage,
transport and disposal of hazardous and toxic substances. Transnational corporations
and other business enterprises shall ensure that the burden of negative
environmental consequences shall not fall on vulnerable racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups.(d) Assessments shall, inter alia, address particularly the impact of
proposed activities on certain groups, such as children, older persons, indigenous
peoples and communities (particularly in regard to their land and natural resources),
and/or women. Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall
distribute such reports in a timely manner and in a manner that is accessible to the
United Nations Environmental Programme, the ILO, other interested international
bodies, the national Government hosting each company, the national Government
where the business maintains its principal office and other affected groups. The
reports shall be accessible to the general public.
(e) Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall respect the prevention principle, for
example by preventing and/or mitigating deleterious
impacts identified in any assessment. They shall also respect
the precautionary principle when dealing, for example, with
preliminary risk assessments that may indicate unacceptable
effects on health or the environment. Further, they shall not
use the lack of full scientific certainty as a reason to delay the
introduction of cost-effective measures intended to prevent
such effects.
(f) Upon the expiration of the useful life of their products or
services, transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall ensure effective means of collecting or
arranging for the collection of the remains of the product or
services for recycling, reuse and/or environmentally
responsible disposal.(g) Transnational corporations and
other business enterprises shall take appropriate measures
in their activities to reduce the risk of accidents and
damage to the environment by adopting best management
practices and technologies. In particular, they shall use best
management practices and appropriate technologies and
enable their component entities to meet these environmental
objectives through the sharing of technology, knowledge and
assistance, as well as through environmental management
systems, sustainability reporting, and reporting of anticipated
or actual releases of hazardous and toxic substances. In
addition, they shall educate and train workers to ensure their
compliance with these objectives.
Worse than average card
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/mexico_is_the_perfect_dicta
tor.html
Part of the problem is that much-needed structural reforms —
such as tax hikes, changes in labor laws, and education
reforms — weren't implemented. The increasing lack of
security, corruption, and a weak law enforcement system also
limited much-needed foreign investment. As Calderon
recently admitted in a WSJ interview: "Mexico needs a lot of
work."
Above all, as I have written earlier, the Maquiladora
Syndrome has been hurting Mexico in recent times. More
than 50% of the country's exports come from manufacturing
operations in free trade zones, and some claim that Mexico,
like China, has become one of the world's manufacturing
superpowers. As a result, the desire for any kind of
innovation, or investment in innovation has simply
evaporated.
Inherency
LOL, Mexican labor laws suck
Rapiey ‘11[Stanley Joseph Rapiey, government
employee/analyst, “Maquiladoras and National Security:
Design Theory as a Guide”,25/10/11,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555400.pdf, KP]
One explanation for the lack of enforcement of Mexico’s labor
laws in the maquiladora sector is that no one is holding the
Mexican government accountable. Despite the defeat of the
PRI in
2000,179 accusations of government corruption and
exploitation of the workforce are still common.180 Due to its
limitations, the NAALC has been ineffective in creating an
impetus for the enforcement of Mexican labor laws. While
Mexico is a signatory to international conventions and
resolutions by the United Nations and the International
Labour Organization articulating the importance of women’s
and workers’ rights,181 the ability of these organizations to
bind Mexico to any such international obligations has also
been somewhat limited.182 Despite the statutes Mexico has
passed and international treaties it has ratified—evidencing a
desire to comport with international standards relating to
labor and women’s rights—the Mexican government still
remains unwilling to circumscribe its own state sovereignty in
the name of these international legal standards.183 Many of
the reasons cited by Mr. Dávalos for the deficient union
presence in Tijuana184 may also explain the lack of
enforcement of Mexican labor laws within the maquiladoras.
These explanations include: workers who do not know their
rights,185 labor unions that fail to hold employers
accountable for violations of Mexican labor laws,186 and
foreign companies that either ignore or do not comprehend
their obligations within the Mexican legal system.187 While
these justifications amount to, at best, an ignorance of the
law, they cannot exculpate the Mexican government or
maquiladora employers from their failure to enforce workers’
rights. The final, and perhaps most compelling, explanation
for the Mexican government’s failure to enforce its labor laws
within maquiladoras is that the government focuses on
creating and maintaining jobs rather than affirming human
rights.188 In a nation where the unemployment rate has been
estimated by some observers to be as high as 25 percent,189
attracting and retaining opportunities for permanent
employment must be a paramount objective of the
government. Can people really be worried about such
concepts as “human rights” when they are struggling to put
food on the table? As Professor Gerhard Erasmus puts it, “[it]
will be difficult to convince people in poor countries of the
value of any human rights if basic needs are not fulfilled.”190
Case 2AC
AT: One Size Fits All Bad
Normal means is distinguishing the needs of
individual companies. That solves.
Weissbrodt et. Al ‘3 [David Weissbrodt and Muria Kruger;
Professor David S. Weissbrodt is a distinguished and widely
published scholar of international human rights law. He
teaches international human rights law, administrative law,
immigration law, and torts. October 2003,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3133689.pdf “Norms on
the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other
Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”, KP]
Some have argued that the Norms create a one-size-fits-all
approach that cannot adequately accommodate the
diversity of business types, sizes, and activities. [FN62] In
fact, however, the Norms deftly establish a system of
relative application based on the strength, size, and other
varying factors of a business that bear on its ability to affect
human rights. This nuanced approach does not lower the
standards for any business; it simply ensures that those with
greater power and influence will also have greater
responsibilities.The responsibility to promote and secure
human rights applies in varying degrees to the private sector;
for example, there are principles directly affecting employees,
principles involving public and private business partners and
their employees, principles affecting the community and the
general human rights environment of that community,
principles that can implicate the relationship of a business
with public institutions, and principles that can involve
concerns for individual human rights, the environment, or the
relevant community. [FN63] The degrees of responsibility
suggest that principles for businesses should not just address
issues for which a business assumes obvious direct
responsibility, such as corporate labor standards, but should
also include areas in which it can assume further
responsibility, through practices such as outsourcing of
products and services. In addition, such principles should
address situations in which at least larger businesses can
influence governmental actions, through, for example,
encouraging the government to improve the human rights
environment of a community. A set of human rights
principles for businesses can be helpful in all of these
contexts. No company, however, no matter how influential,
can be asked to replace governments in their primary
responsibility for the protection of human rights. [FN64]
AT: Enforcement Bad
Enforcement is hella key
-This person is probably gonna be a key cp author
http://www.law.nyu.edu/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&d
DocName=ECM_DLV_015856&RevisionSelectionMetho
d=LatestReleased.
While clarification and coordination are important in the
mean time, other actions are necessary before the Norms is
adopted. Deva suggests that “an enforcement mechanism
should be put in place before the Norms being adopted” and
that mechanism must “not only preempt human rights
violations but also offer speedily an adequate remedy to the
victims in cases of violation.” I suggest that enforcement
should not come from only one mechanism. Although the UN
could create a special rapporteur or even a distinct organ
specifically for enforcement of the Norms, and one or more
NGOs could be devoted to the Norms as well, there are simply
too many interested parties to focus the huge task of
enforcement on one actor. However, enforcement
mechanisms should be made clear to states and TNCs before
the Norms are adapted, specifying which obligations each
should expect to have.
AT: Border 2020
We can’t wait that long
Sanchez ‘12 [ROBERTO A. SANCHEZ, Senior Research Fellow,
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, “Health and Environmental
Risks of the Maquiladora in Mexicali”,
http://lawlibrary.unm.edu/nrj/30/1/12_sanchez_health.pdf,
KP]
Finally, it is important to stress the urgent need for short
term actions to control hazardous waste from the
maquiladoras. The problem is not only growing
quantitatively but also qualitatively. The type and toxicity of
hazardous waste from the maquiladoras in Mexicali is
increasing as the on-coming maquiladoras diversify their
products. Further delays to
take effective action to control hazardous waste from the
maquiladoras in Mexicali could lead, in a very short time, to
dangerous situations for the environment and public health
on both sides of the border.
Advantage Cards
Warming
Squo
Maquiladoras are polluting and causing birth
defects
Fox 96
(Steve Fox, Nov. 26, 1996. “TED Case Studies: NAFTA and the
environments.”
http://www1.american.edu/ted/Maquila.HTM)
More than 3,000 maquiladora operations are currently in
operation along the 2,000 mile border that stretches from
California to Texas -- and their numbers continue to grow.
These duty-free industrial plants now focus on using cheap
domestic labor to assemble mostly foreign components in a
number of different industries. Concentrated development
along the border as well as the nature of the industrial
development has polluted much of the water supply along
the border and created serious environmental issues that
have yet to be addressed by the three countries that are party
to NAFTA (the United States, Mexico and Canada). There is
increasing evidence that pollution of the air and water supply
along the border during NAFTA's first two-and-a-half years,
is exacerbating health problems on both sides of the border.
The most dramatic evidence of health problems has occurred
on the Texas-Mexico border. Clusters of babies being born
with anencephaly -- a rare neural tube birth defect in which a
full-term baby is born with incomplete or missing brains or
skulls -- was originally identified in both Brownsville, Texas
and Matamoris, Mexico in the late 1980s. The incidents of
anencephaly, along with other neural tube birth defects
have increased since NAFTA was implemented in January,
1994. In Cameron County, where Brownsville is located, the
Texas Department of Health reported 15 cases in 1994, up
from 36 percent in 1993, when 11 were reported. The state
also discovered in late 1994, a new cluster of anencephaly
cases, along with cases of spina bifida, in Maverick County. In
1992, just two cases of neural tube defects were reported.
That jumped to four in 1994 and in a three-month period
between December, 1994 and February, 1995, the county
reported a startling one case per month. A 1995 study that
attempted to correlate 12 years of industrial activity in
Matamoros, Mexico with the anencephaly rates in
Brownsville, found that the prevalence of anencephaly is
strongly correlated to the level of activity found in the
nearby Matamoris maquila zone. The report states: "As
maquila activity has waxed and waned, so has the
anencephaly rate increased and decreased in Cameron, but
not in Hidalgo or Nueces [two other counties studied -- but
farther from Matamoros.]" The exact cause of anencephaly
has not been determined, yet there is a growing body of
evidence indicating that various toxic emissions from
factories play a part in the tragic birth defect. A study by the
American Journal of Epidemiology which analyzed mortality
data from the state of Texas indicated that men working in
certain occupations with high chemical exposure have a
greater risk of fathering a child with anencephaly. While
few anencephalic babies are autopsied, one conducted in
Brownsville in 1991 revealed that the baby had the
pesticides DDE, DDT and Lindane -- all banned in the United
States -- in its tissue. Phenylglyoxilic acid, a breakdown
product of styrene and ethylene -- chemicals used to
manufacture plastics, were found in the body of the
autopsied baby at levels that were three times the legal
occupational exposure for adults in the United States. Lax
environmental regulations combined with low wages
continue to make the the maquiladora region attractive to
multinational companies and NAFTA has been unable to
counterattack with any success so far. Data provided by the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in 1993 showed that
General Motors was then the largest private sector employer
in Mexico and that each of the top 100 corporations in the
U.S. had at least one plant operating in Mexico. The reason
was found in the wages. The Institute reported that the
average hourly wage in the U.S. then was $10.97 an hour
compared to the average of 75 cents an hour earned by
maquiladora factory workers. Despite the growing evidence
that flourishing maquiladora industries are polluting the
environment and endangering the quality of life of citizens
on both sides of the border, neither governmet nor NAFTA
officials have sought accountability from any of the
industries operating along the border. The companies have
steadfastly admitted no wrongdoing. There is evidence,
however, that companies don't want information getting out
about their operations and health problems in the region. A
number of companies, including GM, have made out-of-court
settlements with families who live along the border and
claimed that the operations of the companies caused their
babies to be born with neural tube defects. GM was the last of
88 companies to settle in lawsuits filed originally in March of
1993 by a Brownsville attorney. He and the families involved
accused the companies of polluting the atmosphere with
chemicals, resulting in a high number of rare birth defects in
Cameron County in the early 1990s. Martinez said that in two
years he reached settlements with corporations whose
payments ranged between $100,000 and $2 million.
Maquiladoras cause pollution and affects humansbirth defects
World Savvy 09
World Savvy. August 2009. “Mexico: Maquiladoras.”
http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_conte
nt&view=article&id=684&Itemid=1147
Working conditions at maquiladoras can be very poor, in rundown, dirty facilities that are poorly ventilated, with long
hours and few breaks, although in recent years conditions
have been slowly improving. Companies have also been
criticized for improper handling of toxic waste, exposing
workers to hazards that would not be tolerated in other
countries. Areas close to the maquiladoras are filled with
litter and sometimes sewage, because waste is not removed
properly. Rivers have become contaminated with toxic
waste, and air pollution levels are high. As a result, people
living in the towns have developed health problems like skin
rashes, breathing problems, allergies, and birth defects.
Some have tried to fight for a cleanup of the toxic waste that
has been dumped, but have been unsuccessful so far.
Maquilas are toxic
Tox Town, 6/10 (Sub-department of The National Library of Medicine
dedicated to health concerns and toxic chemicals; “What is a maquiladora?”, June 10,
2013; http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/locations.php?id=35)
The high concentration of maquiladoras combined with less
rigorous environmental regulations, limited capacity to
enforce environmental laws, and the expense of exporting
hazardous waste has created an incentive for illegal dumping
and has polluted the surrounding land, water, and air. Inside
the maquiladoras, occupational
hazards relating to toxic chemical
exposure and workplace safety also affect human health.
Occupational hazards are of particular concern in Mexico since first-time violators are
rarely punished and since penalties are typically incurred only for imminent dangers
and failures to address previously highlighted violations.
Maquilas are a leading source of pollution
Godoy, ’11 (Emilio, Mexico-based correspondent who covers the
environment, human rights and sustainable development; “MEXICO: Maquiladora
Factories Manufacture Toxic Pollutants”; Aug 23, 2011;
http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/08/mexico-maquiladora-factories-manufacture-toxicpollutants/)
Since the 1960s, maquiladoras or export assembly plants have
been the
cornerstone of Mexico’s strategy to attract foreign direct
investment and boost exports. But the environmental and
social costs have been high.¶ Maquiladoras, which in Mexico mainly
produce clothing, cars and electronic equipment, consume huge volumes of water,
generate hazardous waste products like alcohols, benzene, acetone,
acids and plastic and metal debris, and emit polluting gases.¶ The
plants, which take advantage of Mexico’s low wages, tax exemptions, and flexible
labour laws while in return providing jobs, cause significant
environmental damages.¶ “Government oversight is poor.
There aren’t enough inspectors. There is no obligatory
inspection scheme, only a voluntary one, and inspections are
arranged in advance, with no surprise visits,” Magdalena Cerda, the Tijuana
representative for the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), told IPS. “We have
seen gradual deterioration in the urban communities where
the factories are located.Ӧ About 3,000 maquiladoras operate in free trade
zones in Mexico, employing some 1.5 million people, according to the National
Council of the Maquiladora Export Industry (CNIMME). Most are located in the
northern cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, on the U.S. border.¶ The North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which entered into force between Canada, Mexico
and the United States in 1994, prompted the installation of dozens of maquiladoras in
Mexico to supply the U.S. market and profit from the Latin American country’s low
labour costs.¶ Related IPS Articles¶ Average monthly wages in maquiladoras in the
border zone are between 500 and 600 dollars.¶ NAFTA
includes provisions
on labour conditions and environmental protection, but
these have not been enforced with sufficient rigour to correct harmful
employment and environmental practices, experts say.¶ In 1983, the Mexican and
U.S. governments signed the Border Environment Cooperation Agreement (BECA) on
the management of toxic substances, with provisions for monitoring and preventing
pollution in the border area.¶ But NAFTA eliminated the BECA requirement that
foreign companies return toxic waste to their countries of origin, because Mexican
environmental law permitted companies to store their hazardous waste material.¶
The maquiladora sector, however, is willing to change its practices if it can continue
to turn a profit, Francisco López, the head of Valle Verde Ecoempresas, a consultancy
advising companies on environmental responsibility, told IPS.¶ The Valle Verde
consultancy emerged from a process that began in 2009 and involved academics,
business executives and government officials working together to come up with
measures the manufacturing sector could use to save electricity and boost energy
efficiency.¶ In March, Valle Verde launched a programme based on environmental
education and energy efficiency, and promoted it among some 50 electronic
assembly factories.¶ Maquiladoras
have been criticised for their
use of dangerous substances. For instance, in order to increase
smoothness and strength in fabrics for making clothes, they are
treated with chemicals such as formaldehyde, caustic soda,
sulphuric acid, bromine and sulphamide, all of which are health hazards,
according the U.S. Organic Consumers Association.¶ The industrial
processes of cleaning, spinning, weaving or knitting and
finishing an item of apparel generate an average of 1.4 kg of
carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases
responsible for global warming, according to The Story of Stuff Project,
developed by U.S. author and web host Annie Leonard.
Maquiladoras pollute regional communities
AU, ’13 (American University, private doctoral institution, research done on the
effects of Maquiladoras; “Border Waste Trade: U.S. and Mexico”; last modified: July
20, 2013; http://www1.american.edu/TED/border.htm)
1. The Issue¶ One
of the most critical and longstanding
international¶ pollution issue facing the border lands is the
discharge of¶ municipal sewage and industrial wastes into
the rivers flowing¶ from Mexico to the United States. All the
communities on the¶ Mexican side of the border lack
adequate municipal wastewater¶ collection and treatment
systems. Industrial effluents also¶ contribute to surface water pollution. Many
Mexican industries,¶ as well as Maquiladoras owned by U.S. companies have
no on site¶ treatment facilities, and industrial wastes
including toxic¶ substances are dumped, illegally of course,
into river systems.¶ 2. Description¶ The U.S.-Mexico border extends
approximately 2,000 miles¶ from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico
in the¶ east. This region lies within the political jurisdiction of four¶ U.S. States and
six Mexican States. Along the border, there has¶ been the development of "twin
cities" located along the border¶ between both countries. Although this region
belongs to the¶ jurisdiction of each individual state, these states share common¶ air
and water resources. Responsibility for resource management¶ falls within the
political authority of two nations with¶ different legal systems, national objectives,
and most¶ importantly, different priorities and levels of development. The¶
major environmental problem is the shortage and poor
quality of¶ surface and underground water, and the
increasing levels of¶ pollution in urban areas.¶ One of the
most concentrated problems resides in the¶ pollution that is
found in the ground and surface waters of the¶ border
region. When the surface waters are no longer sufficient¶ for a
nation to develop, underground water reservoirs, commonly¶ called
aquifers, are resorted to in order to satisfy needs. ¶ Nevertheless,
the uncontrolled mining of groundwater creates¶ further problems for the future.
First, aquifers may become¶ irreversibly depleted if pumping exceeds the very slow
rate of¶ natural replenishment by rainfall and percolation. Moreover,¶ the
increased mining of groundwater creates the risk of aquifer¶
contamination.¶ Excessive over drafting of an aquifer lowers
the water table¶ and allows highly saline surface waste
waters from agricultural¶ and industrial activities to enter
and infect the entire¶ underground water supply. This
situation has worsened as¶ aquifers are not self cleansing, but instead
store contaminants¶ indefinitely. Because cleaning and monitoring of
underground¶ pollutants are difficult and expensive, aquifer
contamination
can¶ go undetected for years. In addition, many of Maquiladora
plants¶ have been illegally dumping the toxic waste
generated by their¶ manufacturing process into the local
communities' waters, but¶ officials in both countries have failed to track the
sources,¶ amount and destination of these contaminated waters.
Environmental degradation because of dumping on
the Maquila Border is rampantWilliams '95 (Edward J. Williams, Ph.D., National
Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade, A paper
delivered at a conference on "International
Boundaries and Environmental Security:
Frameworks for Regional Cooperation,
http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/urbs3525/200
7/OtherCities/MexicoCity/maquil-stats.htm)
The maquiladora industry contributes indirectly and directly
to environmental degradation in the Mexican-United States
Borderlands. Indirectly, the program forms part of a larger panoply of influences
pulling migrants from central and southern Mexico to the Borderlands, creating
an overload on the region's urban infrastructure and its
fragile ecology. Directly, the assembly plants blight the
Borderlands environment through undisciplined and illegal
disposal of their waste material. Irregular dumping of
hazardous and toxic wastes defines the most egregious
example of the transgression.¶ Population has burgeoned in the
binational Borderlands, particularly on the Mexican side. While Mexico's rate of
growth equaled 22 percent in the 1980-1990 decenio, the eight most important
Borderlands cities almost doubled that rate at 43 percent. Tijuana may well be the
world's most rapidly burgeoning large city, having grown 61 percent in the 1980-90
period.3¶ A number of influences have pushed and pulled central and southern
Mexicans to the region, most importantly its relative wealth compared with the rest
of the country. In turn, the Mexican Borderland's relative wealth derives from several
influences, most importantly economic spillover from the United States. The
maquiladora program forms the richest (save the drug industry?) manifestation of U.
S. economic spillover. Potential employment in the maquiladoras defines a significant
pull factor encouraging Mexican migrants to crowd the Borderlands.
In that
sense, the assembly plants explain an indirect contribution
to the area's environmental problems. They contribute to a
situation composed of too many people massing into a
fragile area in a poor country whose government has neither
the financial nor human resources to construct and maintain
sufficient infrastructure and services.¶ More directly, the
maquiladora industry's production and irregular disposal of
waste material blights the region. The assembly plants
dump everything from raw sewage through toxic metals
into the local environment.4 Numerous reports document
the industry's unsafe and illegal disposal practices . They include
a case of children being intoxicated at a dump in Ciudad Juárez by sniffing green rocks
covered with a solvent containing toluene; and a maquiladora that closed and left in
an abandoned building a dozen 55-gallon drums of hazardous material. In 1991, the
Texas Water Commission claimed that
only sixty percent of the
hazardous wastes going from the U. S. to Mexico were
being accounted for and returned to the U. S. The other 40
percent may be stored on the Mexican side or disposed of
illegally.
In 1995 the Mexican Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection
asserted that the
final disposition of 25 percent, or 13,000 tons,
of hazardous and toxic wastes produced by the maquiladora
industry were not accounted for.¶ A study conducted by an
environmental action group in several Borderlands cities provides additional
evidence. In 1990-91 the National Toxics Campaign Fund - Citizens' Environmental
Laboratory sampled waterways in several Borderlands cities adjacent to or near
suspected assembly plants. In Tijuana, Nogales, and Matamoros on the Mexican side
the¶ sample
detected pollution by petroleum, naphthalene,
total xylene, chromium, copper, and other materials.5¶
Chronologically, the most serious problems with hazardous and
toxic wastes derive from relatively recent times. The
composition (quality) of the industry has changed and the
numbers of plants (quantity) have multiplied,
thereby creating
new conditions giving rise to new problems dating from the mid-1980s. The apparel
industry defined the single major component of the maquiladora industry from its
foundation in 1965 through the mid-1970s. A problem with jean washing contributing
to water pollution surfaced in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez in the late 1970s, but the apparel
industry never constituted a serious threat to the physical environment of the
Borderlands.¶ Beginning in the 1980s, however, electronics, chemical, and furniture
industries moved to the area, posing the threat of environmental pollution. The
electronics plants multiplied rapidly, and by the early 1980s electronics eclipsed
apparels as the largest component of the industry. From 1979 through 1985, the
number of apparel plants in the industry shrunk by 10 percent to 108, while the
numbers of electronic equipment and electronic component plants increased by 40
and 60 percent, respectively, to a combined total of 274. By the early 1990s, the
electronics industry came to dominate the Borderlands assembly plants. In a study of
Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Monterrey, electronics installations accounted for 65
percent¶ of all maquiladoras and fully 80 percent of all assembly plant employment in
those three important cities.6 The electronics component of the maquiladora
industry introduced significant new threats of environmental degradation. The
industry employs large volumes of¶ industrial solvents in its
productive process, the most serious menace to surface and
ground water in the binational Borderlands.7¶ Though never
looming so large as electronics, the chemical industry also moved to the Borderlands
in the late 1980s. Only three plants existed in 1985, growing to 51 by 1989 and more
than doubling to 110 by 1992 and continuing to grow thereafter. From January 1992
to January 1995, employment in the chemical plants grew from just over 8000 to
more than 11,600. The
chemical industry poses obvious
environmental dangers, eliciting damnation and vigilance
from environmental activists in the Borderlands.8 Finally,
significant segments of California's furniture industry moved to the Mexican
Borderlands. The U. S.-owned furniture plants fled newly enacted restrictions on the
use of solvent-based paints and requirements to install spray chambers to contain
fumes.9
WarmingExtinction
Air pollution causes extinction
Driesen 3 (David, Associate Professor – Syracuse Univeristy
Law, 10 Buff. Envt'l. L.J. 25, Fall/Spring, Lexis)
Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the
ecosystem upon which all life depends and harming the
health of both future and present generations. The Rio
Declaration articulates six key principles that are relevant to
air pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals,
because they describe a state of affairs that is worth
achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for
realizing those goals. Between them, they aid understanding
of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first
principle is that "human beings. . . are entitled to a healthy
and productive life in harmony with nature", because they
are "at the center of concerns for sustainable development."
3 While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its
reference to life "in harmony with nature" also reflects a
concern about the natural environment. 4 Since air pollution
damages both human health and the environment, air
quality implicates both of these concerns. 5
Left unchecked, warming will cause extinction
Sify 2010 – Sydney newspaper citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,
professor at University of Queensland and Director of the
Global Change Institute, and John Bruno, associate professor
of Marine Science at UNC (Sify News, “Could unbridled
climate changes lead to human extinction?”,
http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changes-
lead-to-human-extinction-news-internationalkgtrOhdaahc.html
The findings of the comprehensive report: 'The impact of
climate change on the world's marine ecosystems' emerged
from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans,
carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists.
One of the authors of the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,
professor at The University of Queensland and the director of
its Global Change Institute (GCI). 'We may see sudden,
unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the
overall well-being of humans, including the capacity of the
planet to support people. This is further evidence that we are
well on the way to the next great extinction event,' says
Hoegh-Guldberg. 'The findings have enormous implications
for mankind, particularly if the trend continues. The earth's
ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and
absorbs 30 per cent of human-generated carbon dioxide, is
equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying
signs of ill-health. It's as if the earth has been smoking two
packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added. 'We are entering a
period in which the ocean services upon which humanity
depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases
beginning to fail', he added. The 'fundamental and
comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the
report include rapidly warming and acidifying oceans,
changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones
within the ocean depths. These are driving major changes in
marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses
and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer, smaller
fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution
of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests among
marine organisms. Study co-author John F Bruno, associate
professor in marine science at The University of North
Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many
physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's oceans, in
ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'. 'This is causing
fundamental and comprehensive changes to the way marine
ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI
release. These findings were published in Science.
And warming is real and anthropogenic
Rahmstorf 8 – Professor of Physics of the Oceans at
Potsdam University (Richard. Global Warming: Looking
Beyond Kyoto. Edited by Ernesto Zedillo. “Anthropogenic
Climate Change?” Page 42-49)
It is time to turn to statement B: human activities are altering
the climate. This can be broken into two parts. The first is as
follows: global climate is warming. This is by now a generally
undisputed point (except by novelist Michael Crichton), so we
deal with it only briefly. The two leading compilations of data
measured with thermometers are shown in figure 3-3, that of
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
and that of the British Hadley Centre for Climate Change.
Although they differ in the details, due to the inclusion of
different data sets and use of different spatial averaging and
quality control procedures, they both show a consistent
picture, with a global mean warming of 0.8°C since the late
nineteenth century. Temperatures over the past ten years
clearly were the warmest since measured records have been
available. The year 1998 sticks out well above the longterm
trend due to the occurrence of a major El Nino event that year
(the last El Nino so far and one of the strongest on record).
These events are examples of the largest natural climate
variations on multiyear time scales and, by releasing heat
from the ocean, generally cause positive anomalies in global
mean temperature. It is remarkable that the year 2005 rivaled
the heat of 1998 even though no El Nino event occurred that
year. (A bizarre curiosity, perhaps worth mentioning, is that
several prominent "climate skeptics" recently used the
extreme year 1998 to claim in the media that global warming
had ended. In Lindzen's words, "Indeed, the absence of any
record breakers during the past seven years is statistical
evidence that temperatures are not increasing.")33 In
addition to the surface measurements, the more recent
portion of the global warming trend (since 1979) is also
documented by satellite data. It is not straightforward to
derive a reliable surface temperature trend from satellites, as
they measure radiation coming from throughout the
atmosphere (not just near the surface), including the
stratosphere, which has strongly cooled, and the records are
not homogeneous' due to the short life span of individual
satellites, the problem of orbital decay, observations at
different times of day, and drifts in instrument calibration.'
Current analyses of these satellite data show trends that are
fully consistent with surface measurements and model
simulations." If no reliable temperature measurements
existed, could we be sure that the climate is warming? The
"canaries in the coal mine" of climate change (as glaciologist
Lonnie Thompson puts it) ~are mountain glaciers. We know,
both from old photographs and from the position of the
terminal moraines heaped up by the flowing ice, that
mountain glaciers have been in retreat all over the world
during the past century. There are precious few exceptions,
and they are associated with a strong increase in precipitation
or local cooling.36 I have inspected examples of shrinking
glaciers myself in field trips to Switzerland, Norway, and New
Zealand. As glaciers respond sensitively to temperature
changes, data on the extent of glaciers have been used to
reconstruct a history of Northern Hemisphere temperature
over the past four centuries (see figure 3-4). Cores drilled in
tropical glaciers show signs of recent melting that is
unprecedented at least throughout the Holocene-the past
10,000 years. Another powerful sign of warming, visible
clearly from satellites, is the shrinking Arctic sea ice cover
(figure 3-5), which has declined 20 percent since satellite
observations began in 1979. While climate clearly became
warmer in the twentieth century, much discussion particularly
in the popular media has focused on the question of how
"unusual" this warming is in a longer-term context. While this
is an interesting question, it has often been mixed incorrectly
with the question of causation. Scientifically, how unusual
recent warming is-say, compared to the past millennium-in
itself contains little information about its cause. Even a highly
unusual warming could have a natural cause (for example, an
exceptional increase in solar activity). And even a warming
within the bounds of past natural variations could have a
predominantly anthropogenic cause. I come to the question
of causation shortly, after briefly visiting the evidence for past
natural climate variations. Records from the time before
systematic temperature measurements were collected are
based on "proxy data," coming from tree rings, ice cores,
corals, and other sources. These proxy data are generally
linked to local temperatures in some way, but they may be
influenced by other parameters as well (for example,
precipitation), they may have a seasonal bias (for example,
the growth season for tree rings), and high-quality long
records are difficult to obtain and therefore few in number
and geographic coverage. Therefore, there is still substantial
uncertainty in the evolution of past global or hemispheric
temperatures. (Comparing only local or regional temperature;
as in Europe, is of limited value for our purposes,' as regional
variations can be much larger than global ones and can have
many regional causes, unrelated to global-scale forcing and
climate change.) The first quantitative reconstruction for the
Northern Hemisphere temperature of the past millennium,
including an error estimation, was presented by Mann,
Bradley, and Hughes and rightly highlighted in the 2001 IPCC
report as one of the major new findings since its 1995 report;
it is shown in figure 3_6.39 The analysis suggests that, despite
the large error bars, twentieth-century warming is indeed
highly unusual and probably was unprecedented during the
past millennium. This result, presumably because of its
symbolic power, has attracted much criticism, to some extent
in scientific journals, but even more so in the popular media.
The hockey stick-shaped curve became a symbol for the IPCC,
.and criticizing this particular data analysis became an avenue
for some to question the credibility of the IPCC. Three
important things have been overlooked in much of the media
coverage. First, even if the scientific critics had been right, this
would not have called into question the very cautious
conclusion drawn by the IPCC from the reconstruction by
Mann, Bradley, and Hughes: "New analyses of proxy data for
the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in
temperature in the twentieth century is likely to have been
the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years." This
conclusion has since been supported further by every single
one of close to a dozen new reconstructions (two of which are
shown in figure 3-6). Second, by far the most serious scientific
criticism raised against Mann, Hughes, and Bradley was simply
based on a mistake. 40 The prominent paper of von Storch
and others, which claimed (based on a model test) that the
method of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes systematically
underestimated variability, "was [itself] based on incorrect
implementation of the reconstruction procedure."41 With
correct implementation, climate field reconstruction
procedures such as the one used by Mann, Bradley, and
Hughes have been shown to perform well in similar model
tests. Third, whether their reconstruction is accurate or not
has no bearing on policy. If their analysis underestimated past
natural climate variability, this would certainly not argue for a
smaller climate sensitivity and thus a lesser concern about the
consequences of our emissions. Some have argued that, in
contrast, it would point to a larger climate sensitivity. While
this is a valid point in principle, it does not apply in practice to
the climate sensitivity estimates discussed herein or to the
range given by IPCC, since these did not use the
reconstruction of Mann, Hughes, and Bradley or any other
proxy records of the past millennium. Media claims that "a
pillar of the Kyoto Protocol" had been called into question
were therefore misinformed. As an aside, the protocol was
agreed in 1997, before the reconstruction in question even
existed. The overheated public debate on this topic has, at
least, helped to attract more researchers and funding to this
area of paleoclimatology; its methodology has advanced
significantly, and a number of new reconstructions have been
presented in recent years. While the science has moved
forward, the first seminal reconstruction by Mann, Hughes,
and Bradley has held up remarkably well, with its main
features reproduced by more recent work. Further progress
probably will require substantial amounts of new proxy data,
rather than further refinement of the statistical techniques
pioneered by Mann, Hughes, and Bradley. Developing these
data sets will require time and substantial effort. It is time to
address the final statement: most of the observed warming
over the past fifty years is anthropogenic. A large number of
studies exist that have taken different approaches to analyze
this issue, which is generally called the "attribution problem."
I do not discuss the exact share of the anthropogenic
contribution (although this is an interesting question). By
"most" I imply mean "more than 50 percent.” The first and
crucial piece of evidence is, of course, that the magnitude of
the warming is what is expected from the anthropogenic
perturbation of the radiation balance, so anthropogenic
forcing is able to explain all of the temperature rise. As
discussed here, the rise in greenhouse gases alone
corresponds to 2.6 W/tn2 of forcing. This by itself, after
subtraction of the observed 0'.6 W/m2 of ocean heat uptake,
would Cause 1.6°C of warming since preindustrial times for
medium climate sensitivity (3"C). With a current "best guess';
aerosol forcing of 1 W/m2, the expected warming is O.8°c.
The point here is not that it is possible to obtain the 'exact
observed number-this is fortuitous because the amount of
aerosol' forcing is still very' uncertain-but that the expected
magnitude is roughly right. There can be little doubt that the
anthropogenic forcing is large enough to explain most of the
warming. Depending on aerosol forcing and climate
sensitivity, it could explain a large fraction of the warming, or
all of it, or even more warming than has been observed
(leaving room for natural processes to counteract some of the
warming). The second important piece of evidence is clear:
there is no viable alternative explanation. In the scientific
literature, no serious alternative hypothesis has been
proposed to explain the observed global warming. Other
possible causes, such as solar activity, volcanic activity, cosmic
rays, or orbital cycles, are well observed, but they do not
show trends capable of explaining the observed warming.
Since 1978, solar irradiance has been measured directly from
satellites and shows the well-known eleven-year solar cycle,
but no trend. There are various estimates of solar variability
before this time, based on sunspot numbers, solar cycle
length, the geomagnetic AA index, neutron monitor data, and,
carbon-14 data. These indicate that solar activity probably
increased somewhat up to 1940. While there is disagreement
about the variation in previous centuries, different authors
agree that solar activity did not significantly increase during
the last sixty-five years. Therefore, this cannot explain the
warming, and neither can any of the other factors mentioned.
Models driven by natural factors only, leaving the
anthropogenic forcing aside, show a cooling in the second half
of the twentieth century (for an example, See figure 2-2,
panel a, in chapter 2 of this volume). The trend in the sum of
natural forcings is downward. The only way out would be
either some as yet undiscovered unknown forcing or a
warming trend that arises by chance from an unforced
internal variability in the climate system. The latter cannot be
completely ruled out, but has to be considered highly unlikely.
No evidence in the observed record, proxy data, or current
models suggest that such internal variability could cause a
sustained trend of global warming of the observed magnitude.
As discussed, twentieth century warming is unprecedented
over the past 1,000 years (or even 2,000 years, as the few
longer reconstructions available now suggest), which does not
'support the idea of large internal fluctuations. Also, those
past variations correlate well with past forcing (solar
variability, volcanic activity) and thus appear to be largely
forced rather than due to unforced internal variability." And
indeed, it would be difficult for a large and sustained unforced
variability to satisfy the fundamental physical law of energy
conservation. Natural internal variability generally shifts heat
around different parts of the climate system-for example, the
large El Nino event of 1998, which warmed, the atmosphere
by releasing heat stored in the ocean. This mechanism implies
that the ocean heat content drops as the atmosphere warms.
For past decades, as discussed, we observed the atmosphere
warming and the ocean heat content increasing, which rules
out heat release from the ocean as a cause of surface
warming. The heat content of the whole climate system is
increasing, and there is no plausible source of this heat other
than the heat trapped by greenhouse gases. A completely
different approach to attribution is to analyze the spatial
patterns of climate change. This is done in so-called
fingerprint studies, which associate particular patterns or
"fingerprints" with different forcings. It is plausible that the
pattern of a solar-forced climate change differs from the
pattern of a change caused by greenhouse gases. For
example, a characteristic of greenhouse gases is that heat is
trapped closer to the Earth's surface and that, unlike solar
variability, greenhouse gases tend to warm more in winter,
and at night. Such studies have used different data sets and
have been performed by different groups of researchers with
different statistical methods. They consistently conclude that
the observed spatial pattern of warming can only be
explained by greenhouse gases.49 Overall, it has to be
considered, highly likely' that the observed warming is indeed
predominantly due to the human-caused increase in
greenhouse gases. ' This paper discussed the evidence for the
anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration
and the effect of CO2 on climate, finding that this
anthropogenic increase is proven beyond reasonable doubt
and that a mass of evidence points to a CO2 effect on climate
of 3C ± 1.59C global-warming for a doubling of concentration.
(This is, the classic IPCC range; my personal assessment is
that, in-the light of new studies since the IPCC Third
Assessment Report, the uncertainty range can now be
narrowed somewhat to 3°C ± 1.0C) This is based on consistent
results from theory, models, and data analysis, and, even in
the absence-of any computer models, the same result would
still hold based on physics and on data from climate history
alone. Considering the plethora of consistent evidence, the
chance that these conclusions are wrong has to be considered
minute. If the preceding is accepted, then it follows logically
and incontrovertibly that a further increase in CO2
concentration will lead to further warming. The magnitude of
our emissions depends on human behavior, but the climatic
response to various emissions scenarios can be computed
from the information presented here. The result is the famous
range of future global temperature scenarios shown in figure
3_6.50 Two additional steps are involved in these
computations: the consideration of anthropogenic forcings
other than CO2 (for example, other greenhouse gases and
aerosols) and the computation of concentrations from the
emissions. Other gases are not discussed here, although they
are important to get quantitatively accurate results. CO2 is
the largest and most important forcing. Concerning
concentrations, the scenarios shown basically assume that
ocean and biosphere take up a similar share of our emitted
CO2 as in the past. This could turn out to be an optimistic
assumption; some models indicate the possibility of a positive
feedback, with the biosphere turning into a carbon source
rather than a sink under growing climatic stress. It is clear that
even in the more optimistic of the shown (non-mitigation)
scenarios, global temperature would rise by 2-3°C above its
preindustrial level by the end of this century. Even for a
paleoclimatologist like myself, this is an extraordinarily high
temperature, which is very likely unprecedented in at least
the past 100,000 years. As far as the data show, we would
have to go back about 3 million years, to the Pliocene, for
comparable temperatures. The rate of this warming (which is
important for the ability of ecosystems to cope) is also highly
unusual and unprecedented probably for an even longer time.
The last major global warming trend occurred when the last
great Ice Age ended between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago:
this was a warming of about 5°C over 5,000 years, that is, a
rate of only 0.1 °C per century. 52 The expected magnitude
and rate of planetary warming is highly likely to come with
major risk and impacts in terms of sea level rise (Pliocene sea
level was 25-35 meters higher than now due to smaller
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets), extreme events (for
example, hurricane activity is expected to increase in a
warmer climate), and ecosystem loss. The second part of this
paper examined the evidence for the current warming of the
planet and discussed what is known about its causes. This
part showed that global warming is already a measured andwell-established fact, not a theory. Many different lines of
evidence consistently show that most of the observed
warming of the past fifty years was caused by human
activity. Above all, this warming is exactly what would be
expected given the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases,
and no viable alternative explanation for this warming has
been proposed in the scientific literature. Taken together.,
the very strong evidence accumulated from thousands of
independent studies, has over the past decades convinced
virtually every climatologist around the world (many of
whom were initially quite skeptical, including myself) that
anthropogenic global warming is a reality with which we
need to deal.
Warming risks extinction, turns every impact
Cummins and Allen 10 (Ronnie, Int’l. Dir. – Organic
Consumers Association, and Will, Policy Advisor – Organic
Consumers Association, “Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the
21st Century”, 2-14,
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/14-6)
The hour is late. Leading climate scientists such as James
Hansen are literally shouting at the top of their lungs that
the world needs to reduce emissions by 20-40% as soon as
possible, and 80-90% by the year 2050, if we are to avoid
climate chaos, crop failures, endless wars, melting of the
polar icecaps, and a disastrous rise in ocean levels. Either we
radically reduce CO2 and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e,
which includes all GHGs, not just CO2) pollutants (currently at
390 parts per million and rising 2 ppm per year) to 350 ppm,
including agriculture-derived methane and nitrous oxide
pollution, or else survival for the present and future
generations is in jeopardy. As scientists warned at
Copenhagen, business as usual and a corresponding 7-8.6
degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures means that
the carrying capacity of the Earth in 2100 will be reduced to
one billion people . Under this hellish scenario, billions will
die of thirst, cold, heat, disease, war, and starvation. If the
U.S. significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, other
countries will follow. One hopeful sign is the recent EPA
announcement that it intends to regulate greenhouse gases
as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately we are
going to have to put tremendous pressure on elected public
officials to force the EPA to crack down on GHG polluters
(including industrial farms and food processors). Public
pressure is especially critical since "just say no" Congressmenboth Democrats and Republicans-along with agribusiness, real
estate developers, the construction industry, and the fossil
fuel lobby appear determined to maintain "business as usual."
Prefer our impact—most likely because it’s
scientifically backed
Sullivan 7 (Gen. Gordon, Chair of CNA Corporation Military
Advisory Board and Former Army Chief of Staff, in "National
Security and the Threat of Climate Change",
http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/National%20Securit
y%20and%20the%20Threat%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf)
“We seem to be standing by and, frankly, asking for
perfectness in science,” Gen. Sullivan said. “People are saying
they want to be convinced, perfectly. They want to know the
climate science projections with 100 percent certainty. Well,
we know a great deal, and even with that, there is still
uncertainty. But the trend line is very clear.” “We never have
100 percent certainty,” he said. “We never have it. If you
wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is
going to happen on the battlefield. That’s something we
know. You have to act with incomplete information. You
have to act based on the trend line. You have to act on your
intuition sometimes.” In discussing how military leaders
manage risk, Gen. Sullivan noted that significant attention is
often given to the low probability/high consequence events.
These events rarely occur but can have devastating
consequences if they do. American families are familiar with
these calculations. Serious injury in an auto accident is, for
most families, a low probability/high consequence event. It
may be unlikely, but we do all we can to avoid it. During the
Cold War, much of America’s defense efforts focused on
preventing a Soviet missile attack—the very definition of a
low probability/high consequence event. Our effort to avoid
such an unlikely event was a central organizing principle for
our diplomatic and military strategies. When asked to
compare the risks of climate change with those of the Cold
War, Gen. Sullivan said, “The Cold War was a specter, but
climate change is inevitable. If we keep on with business as
usual, we will reach a point where some of the worst effects
are inevitable.” “If we don’t act, this looks more like a high
probability/high consequence scenario,” he added. Gen.
Sullivan shifted from risk assessment to risk management. “In
the Cold War, there was a concerted effort by all leadership—
political and military, national and international—to avoid a
potential conflict,” he said. “I think it was well known in
military circles that we had to do everything in our power to
create an environment where the national command
authority—the president and his senior advisers—were not
forced to make choices regarding the use of nuclear weapons.
Even 1% risk outweighs
Strom 7 (Robert, Prof. Emeritus Planetary Sciences @ U.
Arizona and Former Dir. Space Imagery Center of NASA, “Hot
House: Global Climate Change and the Human Condition”,
Online: SpringerLink, p. 246)
Keep in mind that the current consequences of global
warming discussed in previous chapters are the result of a
global average temperature increase of only 0.5 'C above the
1951-1980 average, and these consequences are beginning to
accelerate. Think about what is in store for us when the
average global temperature is 1 °C higher than today. That is
already in the pipeline, and there is nothing we can do to
prevent it. We can only plan strategies for dealing with the
expected consequences, and reduce our greenhouse gas
emissions by about 60% as soon as possible to ensure that we
don't experience even higher temperatures. There is also the
danger of eventually triggering an abrupt climate change that
would accelerate global warming to a catastrophic level in a
short period of time. If that were to happen we would not
stand a chance. Even if that possibility had only a 1% chance
of occurring, the consequences are so dire that it would be
insane not to act. Clearly we cannot afford to delay taking
action by waiting for additional research to more clearly
define what awaits us. The time for action is now.
Makes nuke war inevitable
Campbell et al 2007 [Kurt, “The Age of Consequences: The
Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global
Climate Change,” CSIS, November, p. 3,
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/071105_ageofconsequ
ences.pdf]
In the case of severe climate change, corresponding to an
average increase in global temperature of 2.6°C by 2040,
massive non-linear events in the global environment give
rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In this scenario,
addressed in Chapter IV, nations around the world will be
overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious
challenges, such as pandemic disease. The internal cohesion
of nations will be under great stress, including in the United
States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and
changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. The
flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially
in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China,
has the potential to challenge regional and even national
identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources,
such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is
possible. The social consequences range from increased
religious fervor to outright chaos. In this scenario, climate
change provokes a permanent shift in the relationship of
humankind to nature.
WetlandsExtinction
Wetlands are key to the hydro-cycle – the impact is
extinction
Ramsar Convention, 96, “Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands, Wetlands and Biodiversity, Executive Summary”,
http://www.ramsar.org/about/about_biodiversity.htm, ACC:
12.20.08, p. online
Wetlands - including (inter alia) rivers, lakes, marshes,
estuaries, lagoons, mangroves, seagrass beds, and peatlands
- are among the most precious natural resources on Earth.
These highly varied ecosystems are natural areas where water
accumulates for at least part of the year. Driven by the
hydrological cycle, water is continuously being recycled
through the land, sea and atmosphere in a process which
ensures the maintenance of ecological functions. Wetlands
support high levels of biological diversity: they are, after
tropical rainforests, amongst the richest ecosystems on this
planet, providing essential life support for much of
humanity, as well as for other species. Coastal wetlands,
which may include estuaries, seagrass beds and mangroves,
are among the most productive, while coral reefs contain
some of the highest known levels of biodiversity (nearly onethird of all known fish species live on coral reefs). Other
wetlands also offer sanctuary to a wide variety of plants,
invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, as
well as to millions of both migratory and sedentary
waterbirds. Wetlands are not only sites of exceptional
biodiversity, they are also of enormous social and economic
value, in both traditional and contemporary societies. Since
ancient times, people have lived along water courses,
benefiting from the wide range of goods and services
available from wetlands. The development of many of the
great civilisations was largely based on their access to, and
management of, wetland resources. Wetlands are an integral
part of the hydrological cycle, playing a key role in the
provision and maintenance of water quality and quantity as
the basis of all life on earth. They are often interconnected
with other wetlands, and they frequently constitute rich and
diverse transition zones between aquatic ecosystems and
terrestrial ecosystems such as forests and grasslands.
A2 Warming Not Anthro/Real
Warming happening now – rising water
temperatures prove
USA Today 11 – leader in news, the widest circulated print
newspaper in the United States (Wendy Koch, 1/29/11, "
Arctic waters are warmest in 2000 years: Study ",
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/
2011/01/arctic-waters-warmest-2000-years/1)
Water flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the North Atlantic
is now the warmest in at least 2,000 years, reports a new
international study that's bad news for climate change as
well as polar bears needing sea ice for survival. Waters of
the Fram Strait, which runs between Greenland and the Arctic
archipelago of Svalbard, have warmed about 3.5 degrees
Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, according to the study
published in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Science.
Temperatures are about 2.5 degrees higher than during the
Medieval Warm Period, a time of elevated warmth from A.D.
900 to 1300. "Such a warming of the Atlantic water in the
Fram Strait is significantly different from all climate
variations in the last 2,000 years," study lead author Robert
Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and
Literature in Mainz, Germany, said in announcing the findings.
"Cold seawater is critical for the formation of sea ice, which
helps to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back to space,"
said study co-author Thomas Marchitto, a paleoclimatologist
at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Arctic lost sea
ice larger than the state of Alaska between 1979 and 2009
and could become ice-free during the summers within the
next several decades, according to UC's National Snow and Ice
Data Center.
Warming is real, anthropogenic and accelerating –
prefer reverse biased sources
Robinson, 11 [10/25/11. Eugene, opinion, Washington Post,
Citing extensively Muller a physicist at UC Berkely, “The
scientific finding that settles the climate-change debate”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-scientificfinding-that-settles-the-climate-changedebate/2011/03/01/gIQAd6QfDM_story.html]
For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global
warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there. The latest icy
blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the
climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own.
Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of
California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research
as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated
at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his
own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead,
the record set him straight. 99 percent bogus “Global
warming is real,” Muller wrote last week in The Wall Street
Journal. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the
rest of the neo-Luddites who are turning the GOP into the
anti-science party should pay attention. “When we began
our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues,
and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote. “Our
results turned out to be close to those published by prior
groups. We think that means that those groups had truly
been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince
some skeptics of that.” In other words, the deniers’ claims
about the alleged sloppiness or fraudulence of climate
science are wrong. Muller’s team, the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific
objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.
Muller and his fellow researchers examined an enormous data
set of observed temperatures from monitoring stations
around the world and concluded that the average land
temperature has risen 1 degree Celsius — or about 1.8
degrees Fahrenheit — since the mid-1950s. This agrees with
the increase estimated by the United Nations-sponsored
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Muller’s figures
also conform with the estimates of those British and American
researchers whose catty e-mails were the basis for the alleged
“Climategate” scandal, which was never a scandal in the first
place. The Berkeley group’s research even confirms the
infamous “hockey stick” graph — showing a sharp recent
temperature rise — that Muller once snarkily called “the
poster child of the global warming community.” Muller’s new
graph isn’t just similar, it’s identical. Muller found that
skeptics are wrong when they claim that a “heat island” effect
from urbanization is skewing average temperature readings;
monitoring instruments in rural areas show rapid warming,
too. He found that skeptics are wrong to base their arguments
on the fact that records from some sites seem to indicate a
cooling trend, since records from at least twice as many sites
clearly indicate warming. And he found that skeptics are
wrong to accuse climate scientists of cherry-picking the data,
since the readings that are often omitted — because they are
judged unreliable — show the same warming trend. Muller
and his colleagues examined five times as many temperature
readings as did other researchers — a total of 1.6 billion
records — and now have put that merged database online.
The results have not yet been subjected to peer review, so
technically they are still preliminary. But Muller’s plain-spoken
admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any
longer” has reduced many deniers to incoherent grumbling or
stunned silence. Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as
Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or
perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the
Earth’s future. They may concede that warming is taking
place, but they call it a natural phenomenon and deny that
human activity is the cause. It is true that Muller made no
attempt to ascertain “how much of the warming is due to
humans.” Still, the Berkeley group’s work should help lead all
but the dimmest policymakers to the overwhelmingly
probable answer. We know that the rise in temperatures
over the past five decades is abrupt and very large. We know
it is consistent with models developed by other climate
researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the
burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause. And now
we know, thanks to Muller, that those other scientists have
been both careful and honorable in their work. Nobody’s
fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win
research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over
a “naturally occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges.
Contrary to what Cain says, the science is real. It is the knownothing politicians — not scientists — who are committing an
unforgivable fraud.
Warming is real – prefer recent and rigorous
scientific study
Muller, 11 [OCTOBER 21, 2011 “The Case Against GlobalWarming Skepticism There were good reasons for doubt, until
now.”, Mr. Muller is a professor of physics at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the author of "Physics for Future
Presidents" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702044224045
76594872796327348.html]
As many as 757 stations in the United States recorded net
surface-temperature cooling over the past century. Many are
concentrated in the southeast, where some people attribute
tornadoes and hurricanes to warming. The temperaturestation quality is largely awful. The most important stations in
the U.S. are included in the Department of Energy's Historical
Climatology Network. A careful survey of these stations by a
team led by meteorologist Anthony Watts showed that 70%
of these stations have such poor siting that, by the U.S.
government's own measure, they result in temperature
uncertainties of between two and five degrees Celsius or
more. We do not know how much worse are the stations in
the developing world. Using data from all these poor stations,
the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
estimates an average global 0.64ºC temperature rise in the
past 50 years, "most" of which the IPCC says is due to
humans. Yet the margin of error for the stations is at least
three times larger than the estimated warming. We know that
cities show anomalous warming, caused by energy use and
building materials; asphalt, for instance, absorbs more
sunlight than do trees. Tokyo's temperature rose about 2ºC in
the last 50 years. Could that rise, and increases in other urban
areas, have been unreasonably included in the global
estimates? That warming may be real, but it has nothing to
do with the greenhouse effect and can't be addressed by
carbon dioxide reduction. Moreover, the three major
temperature analysis groups (the U.S.'s NASA and National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.K.'s Met
Office and Climatic Research Unit) analyze only a small
fraction of the available data, primarily from stations that
have long records. There's a logic to that practice, but it
could lead to selection bias. For instance, older stations were
often built outside of cities but today are surrounded by
buildings. These groups today use data from about 2,000
stations, down from roughly 6,000 in 1970, raising even
more questions about their selections. Enlarge Image On top
of that, stations have moved, instruments have changed and
local environments have evolved. Analysis groups try to
compensate for all this by homogenizing the data, though
there are plenty of arguments to be had over how best to
homogenize long-running data taken from around the world
in varying conditions. These adjustments often result in
corrections of several tenths of one degree Celsius, significant
fractions of the warming attributed to humans. And that's just
the surface-temperature record. What about the rest? The
number of named hurricanes has been on the rise for years,
but that's in part a result of better detection technologies
(satellites and buoys) that find storms in remote regions. The
number of hurricanes hitting the U.S., even more intense
Category 4 and 5 storms, has been gradually decreasing since
1850. The number of detected tornadoes has been increasing,
possibly because radar technology has improved, but the
number that touch down and cause damage has been
decreasing. Meanwhile, the short-term variability in U.S.
surface temperatures has been decreasing since 1800,
suggesting a more stable climate. Without good answers to all
these complaints, global-warming skepticism seems sensible.
But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at
least not any longer. Over the last two years, the Berkeley
Earth Surface Temperature Project has looked deeply at all
the issues raised above. I chaired our group, which just
submitted four detailed papers on our results to peerreviewed journals. We have now posted these papers online
at www.BerkeleyEarth.org to solicit even more scrutiny. Our
work covers only land temperature—not the oceans—but
that's where warming appears to be the greatest. Robert
Rohde, our chief scientist, obtained more than 1.6 billion
measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations
around the world. Many of the records were short in
duration, and to use them Mr. Rohde and a team of esteemed
scientists and statisticians developed a new analytical
approach that let us incorporate fragments of records. By
using data from virtually all the available stations, we avoided
data-selection bias. Rather than try to correct for the
discontinuities in the records, we simply sliced the records
where the data cut off, thereby creating two records from
one. We discovered that about one-third of the world's
temperature stations have recorded cooling temperatures,
and about two-thirds have recorded warming. The two-to-one
ratio reflects global warming. The changes at the locations
that showed warming were typically between 1-2ºC, much
greater than the IPCC's average of 0.64ºC. To study urbanheating bias in temperature records, we used satellite
determinations that subdivided the world into urban and
rural areas. We then conducted a temperature analysis
based solely on "very rural" locations, distant from urban
ones. The result showed a temperature increase similar to
that found by other groups. Only 0.5% of the globe is
urbanized, so it makes sense that even a 2ºC rise in urban
regions would contribute negligibly to the global average.
What about poor station quality? Again, our statistical
methods allowed us to analyze the U.S. temperature record
separately for stations with good or acceptable rankings, and
those with poor rankings (the U.S. is the only place in the
world that ranks its temperature stations). Remarkably, the
poorly ranked stations showed no greater temperature
increases than the better ones. The mostly likely explanation
is that while low-quality stations may give incorrect absolute
temperatures, they still accurately track temperature
changes. When we began our study, we felt that skeptics
had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd
find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by
prior groups. We think that means that those groups had
truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability
to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid
bias in their data selection, homogenization and other
corrections. Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will
help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of
the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely
effects? We made no independent assessment of that.
Feedbacks are net positive—must act now to
prevent runaway warming
Hansen, 8 – head of NASA Goddard Institute and professor
of Environmental Sciences, Columbia University (James E.
Hanson. Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies in New York City and adjunct professor in the
Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia
University. Al Gore’s science advisor. Introductory chapter for
the book State of the Wild. “Tipping point: Perspective of a
Scientist.” April.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/StateOfWild_2008042
8.pdf)
Fast feedbacks—changes that occur quickly in response to
temperature change—amplify the initial temperature
change, begetting additional warming. As the planet warms,
fast feedbacks include more water vapor, which traps
additional heat, and less snow and sea ice, which exposes
dark surfaces that absorb more sunlight. Slower feedbacks
also exist. Due to warming, forests and shrubs are moving
poleward into tundra regions. Expanding vegetation, darker
than tundra, absorbs sunlight and warms the environment.
Another slow feedback is increasing wetness (i.e., darkness) of
the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets in the warm
season. Finally, as tundra melts, methane, a powerful
greenhouse gas, is bubbling out. Paleoclimatic records
confirm that the long-lived greenhouse gases— methane,
carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide—all increase with the
warming of oceans and land. These positive feedbacks amplify
climate change over decades, centuries, and longer. The
predominance of positive feedbacks explains why Earth’s
climate has historically undergone large swings: feedbacks
work in both directions, amplifying cooling, as well as
warming, forcings. In the past, feedbacks have caused Earth to
be whipsawed between colder and warmer climates, even in
response to weak forcings, such as slight changes in the tilt of
Earth’s axis.2 The second fundamental property of Earth’s
climate system, partnering with feedbacks, is the great
inertia of oceans and ice sheets. Given the oceans’ capacity
to absorb heat, when a climate forcing (such as increased
greenhouse gases) impacts global temperature, even after
two or three decades, only about half of the eventual
surface warming has occurred. Ice sheets also change slowly,
although accumulating evidence shows that they can
disintegrate within centuries or perhaps even decades. The
upshot of the combination of inertia and feedbacks is that
additional climate change is already “in the pipeline”: even if
we stop increasing greenhouse gases today, more warming
will occur. This is sobering when one considers the present
status of Earth’s climate. Human civilization developed
during the Holocene (the past 12,000 years). It has been
warm enough to keep ice sheets off North America and
Europe, but cool enough for ice sheets to remain on
Greenland and Antarctica. With rapid warming of 0.6°C in
the past 30 years, global temperature is at its warmest level
in the Holocene.3 The warming that has already occurred, the
positive feedbacks that have been set in motion, and the
additional warming in the pipeline together have brought us
to the precipice of a planetary tipping point. We are at the
tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready
positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West
Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice. Little
additional forcing is needed to trigger these feedbacks and
magnify global warming. If we go over the edge, we will
transition to an environment far outside the range that has
been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return
within any foreseeable future generation. Casualties would
include more than the loss of indigenous ways of life in the
Arctic and swamping of coastal cities. An intensified
hydrologic cycle will produce both greater floods and greater
droughts. In the US, the semiarid states from central Texas
through Oklahoma and both Dakotas would become more
drought-prone and ill suited for agriculture, people, and
current wildlife. Africa would see a great expansion of dry
areas, particularly southern Africa. Large populations in Asia
and South America would lose their primary dry season
freshwater source as glaciers disappear. A major casualty in all
this will be wildlife.
The peer reviewed studies corroborating our
warming claims are best—prefer them over
hackery cloaked as skepticism
Davies 8 – 6/11, Author and Geophysicist at the Australian
National University
[Dr. Geoff Davies, June 11 2008, Science Alert, “Why listen to
scientists?”,
<http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/2008110617474.html>]
Professor Don Aitkin’s recent promotion (PDF 258KB) of the
“sceptical” view of global warming and the ensuing heated
debates on several web sites bring to the fore the question of
what authority attaches to the published conclusions and
judgments of climate scientists. Professor Aitkin, who is not a
scientist, is in no doubt himself that the more outspoken
climate scientists have a “quasi-religious” attitude. That is the
mild end of the spectrum of opinions of
sceptics/denialists/contrarians. Most of the media and many
politicians seem to have the view that scientists are just
another interest group, and that scientists’ opinions are just
opinions, to be heard or discarded like any others. The
Australian government seems to credit only the very
conservative end of climate scientists’ warnings, because it is
acting as though we have many decades in which to adjust,
and many years before anything serious needs to be under
way. The big difference between scientists’ professional
conclusions and those of others is that science has a
pervasive and well-developed quality-control process. The
first stage is called peer review. Any paper that is published
in a reputable scientific journal must be given the OK by
several other scientists in the same field. Furthermore, after
publication a paper will be read critically by many more
scientists, and it is not uncommon for conclusions to be
challenged in subsequent publications. For a paper to become
widely acknowledged it must survive such scrutiny for a
reasonable period, typically several years. All of this is on top
of the fact that a scientific paper is based on observations of
the world and on a large accumulation of well-tested
regularities, such as the “laws” of physics. Few other groups
have any comparable process. Certainly the media, politicians
and climate sceptics have no such process. Most of the
studies referred to by sceptics have either not been published
in a relevant peer-reviewed scientific journal or have
subsequently been challenged and found wanting in other
peer-reviewed studies. The peer-review process is far from
perfect, but it yields a product distinctly less unreliable than
all the other opinions flying around. The process of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adds
another layer of caution. Basically the IPCC gets a large
number of relevant scientists to step back from the front-line
disputes and ask “What can most of us agree on?”. Sceptics
who dismiss all of the science because there are many
disputes miss or obfuscate this basic aspect of IPCC
assessments. There is a degree of judgment involved in the
IPCC process, and in virtually any public summary by a
climate scientist. Some would claim judgment is not the job
of scientists; it is the job of politicians and others. But
scientists are the best placed to judge the state of
knowledge in their field. If their conclusions are potentially
of great import, then they have a responsibility to state their
best professional judgment. The claim by Professor Aitkin
and many other sceptics that climate scientists don’t discuss
the uncertainties in their conclusions and judgments simply
misrepresents or misperceives the abundant information on
uncertainties. Even the IPCC’s most terse summary
statements clearly acknowledge uncertainty when they say,
for example, “Most of the observed increase in global average
temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to
the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas
concentrations” [emphasis in original]. The term “very likely”
is specifically defined in the IPCC summaries to mean the
“assessed likelihood, using expert judgment”, is greater than
90 per cent. Clive Hamilton contrasts the scientific and IPCC
processes with those of many sceptics (see Atkin’s response
here). He traces connections from relatively naïve people like
Professor Aitkin back to people and web sites funded by
ExxonMobil and others. Sceptics love to question the motives
of climate scientists, but rarely mention the motives of the
very powerful multi-trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry, parts of
which are actively promoting doubt and disinformation in
exactly the manner used by the tobacco industry for many
years. Observations from the past two or three years, too
recent to have been included in the 2007 IPCC Reports, show
disturbing signs that the Earth’s response to our activities is
happening much faster than expected. The most dramatic
sign is a sudden acceleration of the rate of shrinkage of
Arctic sea ice. Prominent NASA climate scientist Dr James
Hansen is perhaps the most vocal, but far from alone, in
arguing that the Earth may be very close to a tipping point
beyond which large, unstoppable and irreversible climate
change could occur. Scientific issues are not settled by
appeals to authority, nor by a vote. That is not the issue
here. The issue is whether scientists’ professional judgments
have weight. Those in strategic positions in our society, like
politicians and journalists, who treat scientists’ collective
professional judgments as no better than any other opinion
are being seriously irresponsible. You can ignore the IPCC if
you want, but you should realise that its most recent
assessment may have seriously understated the global
warming problem. You can ignore James Hansen if you want,
but you should know that his judgments from two or three
decades ago are being broadly vindicated.
Water Pollution
Squo
Maquiladoras release toxic chemicals into
residential water
Bullard, ’02 (Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Edmund Asa Ware Distinguished
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at
Clark Atlanta University, leader in environmental justice; “POVERTY, POLLUTION AND
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITIES “; 11/22/2002; http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html)
U.S.-Mexico Border Ecology. The conditions
surrounding the more
than 1,900 maquiladoras, assembly plants operated by American,
Japanese, and other foreign countries, located along the 2,000-mile
U.S.-Mexico border may further exacerbate the waste trade.
The industrial plants use cheap Mexican labor to assemble
imported components and raw material and then ship finished
products back to the United States. Over a half million Mexican
workers are employed in the maquiladoras.¶ All along the
Lower Rio Grande River Valley maquiladoras dump their
toxic wastes into the river, from which 95 percent of the
region's residents get their drinking water. [22] In the border cities
of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoras, Mexico, the rate of anencephaly--babies born without brains---is four times the national
average. Affected families filed lawsuits against 88 of the area's 100
maquiladoras for exposing the community to xylene, a
cleaning solvent that can cause brain hemorrhages, and lung
and kidney damage.¶ The Mexican environmental regulatory
agency is understaffed and ill-equipped to adequately
enforce its laws. Many of the Mexican border towns have now become cities
with skyscrapers and freeways. More important, the "brown pallor of these
southwestern skies has become a major health hazards." [23]¶
Maquiladoras poison the air and water of local
residential communities
Bullard, ’02 (Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Edmund Asa Ware Distinguished
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at
Clark Atlanta University, leader in environmental justice; “POVERTY, POLLUTION AND
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITIES “; 11/22/2002; http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html)
Toxics on the U.S.-Mexico Border. All
along the Lower Rio Grande
River Valley maquiladoras dump their toxic waste into the
river, from which over 95 percent of the region's residents
get their drinking water. Shantytowns or colonias are home to 1 of every 5
residents of the 14 Texas counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. Of the 11 million
border inhabitants, about 50% live in the three twin cities of: Ciudad Ju‡rez -- El
Paso; Mexicali -- Calexico; and Tijuana -- San Diego. In 1998, about 3,000
maquiladoras were in operation within the country of Mexico, of which 2,400 were
situated in the border region. In 1997,maquiladoras
employed more
than 900,000 people working at more than 3,000 plants,
mainly along the border. Heavy exposure to toxics is not
limited to workers. The maquiladoras produce large
quantities of hazardous waste, little of which finds it way back to
the country of origin for proper disposal. In addition, the air and
water of local residential communities is fouled by toxic
emissions in the air and untreated industrial waste.
Water PollutionExtinction
Litany of impacts – housing market, agriculture,
ecosystems, disease, and the overall economy are
affected by groundwater contamination
Page and Rabinowitz, 93 (G. William, Ph.D., professor in
the Department of Planning, University of Buffalo, the State
University of New York *AND Harvey, former professor,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Autumn 1993,
“Groundwater contamination: Its effects on property values
and cities,” American Planning Association, Journal of the
American Planning Association Volume 59, Issue 4, ProQuest,
Hensel)
Toxic chemical contamination of groundwater is a national
problem. Groundwater contamination is the most serious
problem at the majority of sites in the federal government's
$15.2 billion Superfund program (U.S. Government
Accounting Office 1991b). The program, which deals with the
worst cases of contamination, as identified by the national
priorities list, has insufficient funds to clean up all
contamination; thus, the 1,200 Superfund sites are only a
small portion of the contaminated sites in the United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which operates
the Superfund, sets the standards for levels of contamination.
At the local level, where remediation is conducted,
groundwater contamination is having significant impacts on
property markets and on local government. Groundwater
contamination and other forms of pollution impose many
costs on society. Extensive research has measured the
negative externalities of various types of pollution, but little
has been done to determine the costs resulting from the
contamination of groundwater with toxic chemicals.
Groundwater supplies about 40 percent of the U.S.
population with drinking water, is used extensively by
agriculture and industry, and is critical to sensitive surface
water ecosystems. Contaminated groundwater is extremely
expensive and difficult to clean up. Toxic chemical
contamination in groundwater is an increasingly serious
problem for local government, which is responsible for
protecting the public health, the environment, and the tax
base, which pays for government services, and for stimulating
local economic development. Local governments often have
to take remedial action to clean up groundwater because the
polluter cannot be identified or found legally liable. The
health risks, high costs of remedial action to clean up
groundwater contamination, and the legal liability issues
create serious financial problems and moral dilemmas for
municipalities. Policy planners at all levels of government
must be aware of the full social and environmental costs of
groundwater contamination to be able to create policies that
efficiently allocate resources for remediation incentives and
to be able to devise adequate penalties to deter sufficiently
potential polluters. Property owners must also be aware of
the full costs of groundwater contamination as well as of their
own liability for such contamination. Under EPA policy,
current owners of property may be liable even if they did not
cause the pollution. Mortgagees, lessees, and managers of
property are also often drawn into the net of potentially
responsible parties (PRPs) who could be found liable for
contamination. The nature of groundwater flows complicates
the contamination issue. Toxic chemicals in groundwater are
not static; they move in a plume of contamination.
Contaminants degrade much less efficiently in groundwater
than in surface waters. Neither the direction nor the rate of
movement of plumes of toxic chemicals in groundwater is
predictable without a thorough and costly hydrogeological
investigation; and even the most thorough investigations
may produce inaccurate predictions about contamination
movement because of the complexity of and the difficulties
in monitoring groundwater systems. The plume of
contaminated groundwater will continue to flow and may
pollute municipal water supply wells or private wells in the
same or nearby communities, or it may discharge into
wetlands, rivers, lakes, or coastal waters. Owners of property
near sites containing contamination also should know if real
or perceived concerns about contamination will affect the
value of their property.
Wetlands
BioD-Tijuana River
Squo
Tijuana River’s health and biodiversity is crucial to
maintaining global biodiversity
Atkinson et al. 09
(Emily E. Atkinson, Department of Geography, Master of
Science. August 2009. Dr. Kathleen A. Farley, Dr. Kate
Swanson, Dr. David Carruthers. “Linking Land Use and Policy
in the Tijuana River Watershed.” San Diego University.
www.emilyeatkinson.com/documents/atkinson_thesis_final.p
df)
The California Floristic Province, stretching from southwest
Oregon to northern Baja California, is internationally
recognized as one of the world’s 25 biodiversity hotspots
(Conservation International, 2008; Myers et al., 2000). It
encompasses the South Coast Floristic Region, an area along
the U.S.-Mexico border known for supporting the highest
number of endemic plant species in the California Floristic
Province. In the center of this floristic region lies the Tijuana
River Watershed, a 4,532 km2 basin comprised of portions of
northern Baja California and southern San Diego County
(Ganster, 2005) (Figure 1). Figure 1. Map of the U.S.-Mexico
border between southern California and northern Baja
California, including the Tijuana River Watershed and the
location of the city of San Diego and Tijuana. Aside from being
part of the California Floristic Province, the Tijuana River
Watershed has several key physical characteristics that make
it unique. First, it is a bi-national watershed with one-third of
its area in the United States and two-thirds in Mexico
(Wright, 2005a). The headwaters of the river begin in eastern
San Diego County and travel south across the border into the
city of Tijuana, eventually returning to San Diego where the
river drains into the Pacific Ocean. The Tijuana River is one
of the many examples of shared resources, including water
and ecological resources, which are bisected by an
international border. Second, the watershed contains one of
the last coastal wetlands in Southern California, the Tijuana
River Estuary (Ganster, 2005; Roullard, 2005). The 1,000hectare publicly owned reserve is located north of the city of
Tijuana in San Diego County and is the endpoint for rivers
and streams in the watershed as they travel through the
estuary into the Pacific Ocean. The estuary also serves as an
important rest stop for migratory birds traveling south along
the Pacific Flyway (Roullard, 2005). Finally, the Tijuana River
Watershed supports a significant number of native plant
communities, including a variety of species of coastal sage
scrub and chaparral (O'Leary, 2005). These globally rare
plant communities provide habitat to a number of
threatened and endangered wildlife species (O'Leary, 2005).
Maquiladoras are polluting the Tijuana
Pauw 97
(Theodore Pauw. 1/11/97. “TED Case Studies: Tijuana River
Pollution.” http://www1.american.edu/ TED/TIJUANA.HTM.)
Sewage from Tijuana has been flowing into the Pacific
Oceanfor over six decades. This became a serious problem in
the 1960s with the rise of the maquiladora program in 1965,
which encouraged migration to the Tijuana area. The Pacific
coast and the Tijuana River Estuary have suffered as a
consequence. Trade is related to this case in several ways.
The maquiladoras directly and indirectly generate waste and
sewage that pollutes the environment. The pollution also
affects the tourist industry in San Diego; the beaches and the
estuary are unseemly places to visit at times. The important
question in this and other cases related to the U.S.-Mexico
border is whether free trade will encourage Mexico to clean
up its environment or whether it will degrade the
environment further. The problem in this case is directly
related to the economy of Tijuana. The concept of the
maquiladora industry began in965 with the creation of the
Border Industrialization Plan (BIP). The idea came from the
success of "export processing zones" in South Korea and
Taiwan. The attractiveness of the maquiladora industry is that
companies have access to relatively low-cost labor and remain
close to the U.S. market. During the 1960s, the sewage
problem became unmanageable as a result of the influx of
people seeking work. Both industrial and human waste
comprise the excess sewage. This problem has grown over
the years along with the growth of the population of Tijuana
and the growth of the maquiladora industry. The severity of
the problem dramatically increased when the number of
maquiladoras increased dramatically. In 1983, the number
of maquiladoras numbered 140; in 1989, there were
approximately 450 maquiladoras in the Tijuana area. The
number of workers was 19,239 and 60,000, respectively. By
January 1995, there were 529 maquiladoras employing 81,599
employees. (The City of Tecate, also in the Tijuana watershed,
has 92 maquiladoras employing 19,772 employees.) The
Tijuana treatment system is not able to process all of the
waste that is being produced. Consequently, approximately
13 million gallons of raw sewage spills into the Pacific Ocean
and flows up to San Diego County beaches. During the 1960s,
the City of San Diego responded to this problem by treating as
much of the waste as it could. In 1965 it signed an agreement
to treat the sewage. The agreement expired in 1985. Annex I
of The Border Environmental Agreements, signed in 1985, was
designed to replace the old arrangement. The new agreement
called for the construction of two new facilities. Mexico
decided to build a treatment facility in La Joya and the U.S.
decided to build a pipeline system and a treatment facility on
the U.S. side to support the La Joya facility in the event of a
breakdown. The facilities were supposed to have been built
within 5 years but the second plant is not finished. The 1987
amendments to the Clean Water Act allowed government
officials to take vigorous steps to address the problem (see
CLEAN case). Consequently, a multi-phased plan was drawn
up, outlining construction of the requisite facilities. The EPA
and the City of San Diego are also planning to construct
facilities in San Diego County to improve treatment. The
Mexican plant was completed in October 1991. The plant
consisted of a treatment plant, conveyance channel, pressure
line, and pumping plant. The second plant in San Diego, the
South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (ITP),
which will cost approximately $400 million to build, was
supposed to be finished by 1995 but now the completion date
is set for February 1997. (The completion date was changed in
June 1995; the previous completion date was December,
1996.) When it is finished, it will serve the Tijuana-San Diego
area; it will be able to handle up to 25 million gallons per day.
In addition, a 3.5 mile tunnel will be constructed to dispose of
the treated waste in the ocean, which is scheduled for
completion in May 1998. (The completion date was changed
in June 1995; the previous completion date was February
1998.) When completed, the treatment processing facilities
will be able to process the 13 million gallons of untreated
sewage that enters the Pacific ocean everyday. However, the
treatment plants will not be able to stop sewage from
overflowing into the Tijuana River Estuary when there is an
excessive discharge of sewage or when the river rises (see
Tijuana case). The project to clean up the Tijuana River is part
of a larger border clean up plan that addresses water, land,
and air pollution. The plan to clean up the entire U.S.-Mexico
border is estimated to be completed by 2003 and could cost
between $6.5 billion to $20 billion (see Table 147-1). Table
147-1 Financing the San Diego Plant U.S. federal government
$239 million Mexico $16 million City of San Diego $88-$140
million State of California $5.3 million As a result of NAFTA, the
maquiladora program will cease on January 1, 2001 (see
NAFTA case). Existing duties on imported parts and other
trade restrictions will be eliminated. In addition, the number
of companies choosing to locate in the border area will
increase because of the relative advantages associated with
being situated near the border. The San Diego- Tijuana area
in particular expects to see an increase in the number of
manufacturing companies. JVC is building a plant in San Diego
County on the border so that it can take advantage of low
wages yet be subject to U.S. jurisdiction. There are several
trade-related issues in this case. The primary issue is the
extent to which tourism in the City of San Diego is impacted by
the pollution in the Tijuana River Estuary and the Pacific
Ocean. The second is the extent to which companies choose
to locate in Tijuana to exploit the lax enforcement of
environmental laws. The third is the effect of the temporary
halt in the project on trade. The severity of the problem is
deceptively large. The beaches in San Diego County were
closed almost the entire summer of 1993 and Imperial Beach
was closed for 200 days in 1993. The health risks are severe.
Anyone venturing into the Tijuana River Estuary must be
extremely careful as one risks getting salmonella, shigella,
fibrial, cholera, hepatitis A, and malaria. The City of Tijuana
also suffers from a lack of proper sanitation services. For
example, Loma Taurina, a poor neighborhood, has health
hazards created by the untreated sewage. During severe
storms untreated sewage spills into the streets.
Unfortunately, properly treating this problem will require an
amount of money far beyond the capacity of the City of
Tijuana. \
Tijuana River is being massively polluted by the
maquiladoras
Good 05
David Good. Dave Good is an award-winning journalist and
author for the San Diego Reader. Sept. 12, 2005. “Showdown
on the Rio
Alamar.”http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/sep/05
/cover-showdown-rio-alamar/?page=2&
Before NAFTA,” (the North American Free Trade Agreement
of 1994) says Mendez, “people could fish and bathe in the
Rio Alamar. Before the maquilas came in 1986, you could
actually drink the water.”
It is no longer news to anyone in San Diego that during
winter storms, sewage-laden floodwaters from the Tijuana
River overwhelm both the Tijuana estuary, one of the most
important salt-marsh ecosystems left in the U.S., and the
Pacific Ocean. The winter waters off Imperial Beach become
a hellish broth of contaminants and raw sewage, and area
beaches are known to remain closed to the public
throughout the season. This sewage spill has a name: the
Tijuana River plume, and it is tracked by the Southern
California Coastal Ocean Observing System.A TED (the
acronym stands for Trade and Environmental Database) case
study, #147, titled “Tijuana River Pollution,” placed a
substantial portion of the blame for all that pollution on the
maquiladora program. NAFTA, they say, provided paychecks,
but in turn encouraged the migration of thousands upon
thousands of job-seekers to Tijuana in advance of any sort of
infrastructure. In other words, humans outnumbered toilets.
Much of the workforce simply squatted in makeshift
encampments on the banks of the Alamar. The maquilas
themselves, some 3000 factories and assembly plants,
generate additional toxic waste and sewage.Mendez says
that practicing environmentalism in the midst of such thirdworld abuse is difficult. “You never really know where the
Mexican government is at, what they’re doing, or why
they’re doing it. It’s hard to get documents.”He takes one
last look around the pitiful arroyo and the Alamar before we
leave, but one senses that he sees something aside from the
results of years of dumping. “It is a great opportunity,” he
finally says, “to clean the air with all these trees.”“Tijuana is a
coast city. We’re a river city.”Margarita Díaz is the director
of Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental A.C. (Border
Environmental Education Project) in Tijuana. Proyecto
Fronterizo is one of a list of binational environmental
agencies, governmental agencies, and nonprofits that have a
stake in the outcome of the Rio Alamar project.She calls
from her office in Playas. “But the [Mexican] government
doesn’t see it that way,” she says, “and even we don’t see
ourselves as a river city. I tell people that we have a river
running through the middle of our city. That’s not a river,
they say. That’s a tunnel.”The Tijuana River originates in
Mexico and crosses the international boundary into the
United States near San Ysidro. The majority of the river was
channelized and run into a concrete straitjacket during the
late 1960s. The channelization of creeks and rivers and seeps
and above-ground springs is an old-school engineering
solution to seasonal flooding that dates back to the 1930s
and possibly earlier. Channelization does exactly what it is
supposed to do: it provides a concrete fast track through
which large volumes of water can move out of a given area
at a high rate of speed. On paper, it seems like a good
solution, if, that is, one doesn’t mind the total loss of nature
that comes with the process.But channelization has also
been identified as a major source of ocean pollution. Along
with water, urban channels transport anything and
everything that happens to be in them, including,
sometimes, humans. In spite of the best engineering
intentions, people have drowned in such culverts during
storm events.“Channelization is always bad for a river,” says
Travis Pritchard, a chemist who monitors water quality for San
Diego Coastkeeper. “Six months ago I went down to Tijuana
and met with Margarita Díaz.” They observed what remained
of the Rio Alamar. “It’s super sad. I felt like I was watching
the death of a river before my eyes.”
Tijuana Key
Tijuana is key to international biodiversity and
human well-being
NERR 10
(“Tijuana River Comprehensive Management Plan- National
Estuarine Research Reserve”. National Estuarine Research
Reserve. August 2010.
http://www.nerrs.noaa.gov/Doc/PDF/Reserve/TJR_
MgmtPlan.pdf)
The Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve
(TRNERR) is unique in a local, regional, national, and
international context. It offers one of the best and largest
remaining examples of California’s coastal wetland habitat, a
habitat that has been largely lost due to urban development
or seriously degraded elsewhere in southern California. This
section includes a brief description of the importance of
estuarine habitats and the natural resources protected within
the Reserve.
I. THE NEED TO PROTECT ESTUARIES A. DEFINITION Estuaries
are a hydrological and biological crossroads, defined as the
portion of the earth's coastal zone where there is interaction
of ocean water, freshwater, land, and atmosphere. The
specific plant and animal habitats that may be supported by
an estuarine system are determined by conditions in the
watershed and in the adjacent ocean. The rate at which
fresh water enters the estuary, the amount and type of
waterborne and bottom sediments, the degree of tidal
flushing, and water depth (hence temperature and degree of
sunlight), all combine to produce diverse biological
communities in a dynamic and complex system. A
significant physical change in any of those factors can
trigger traumatic changes in the estuarine biologic
community , greatly enlarging or reducing the size of various
species' populations. B. ESTUARINE FUNCTIONS Estuarine
wetlands
provide a number of valuable ecological functions, or socalled “ecosystem services.” Most broadly, there are sources
of recreational and aesthetic benefits, as witnessed by the
boom in industries such as eco-tourism. Also, they offer
critical buffers between the sea, land, and freshwater. They
can protect inland areas from ocean-borne waves and storm
activity. Also, they also can help protect the ocean from
watershed inputs, filtering and helping to purify water. In a
healthy estuarine system, the interaction of tides,
unpolluted fresh water, and sediments creates some of the
most productive systems on the planet. Sheltered shallow
waters and soft mud or sand flats, regularly flooded by the
tides, provide ideal conditions for abundant life. Among the
most important estuarine species are microscopic
photosynthetic organisms called phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton, like green plants, make the energy of sunlight
available to animals as food. Phytoplankton are consumed by
microscopic and minute animals called zooplankton. These
animals include small crustaceans such as copepods, and the
larvae of fish, crabs, clams, and other species. These
organisms themselves are part of the food supply for adults of
their own or other species. Marsh plants and eelgrass growing
in shallow estuarine waters are critically important to
estuarine animal life. Marsh vegetation not only provides
cover for many animals, but also, as it dies back each season,
creates detritus that feeds and houses the species on which
larger species depend. The blades of eelgrass are homes for
algae, snails, and other food for larger animals. Juveniles of
many species reach adulthood by hiding among estuarine
vegetation. In an undisturbed estuary, the wealth of food can
support huge populations of immature and adult fish, crabs,
shrimp, and other species. Those animals provide essential
food for populations of birds and mammals, including
people. ¶ C. MODIFICATION OF ESTUARIES Estuaries-characteristically flat land that offers sheltered access to the
sea, and a profusion of fish and other seafood--offer attractive
conditions for human habitation, agricultural production, and
transportation. Estuaries on the west coast of the U.S.
supported native peoples for thousands of years and, more
recently, settlers from other parts of the globe. ¶ Prior to the
1970s, the value and finite nature of estuaries were not fully
appreciated. It was not recognized that estuaries are
integral to ecological and human well-being. Destruction
of estuaries was disastrously affecting water quality,
commercial and recreational fisheries, and overall
ecosystem health. Estuary-dependent plants and animal
populations began to dwindle with lost habitat, food
sources, and reproductive sites. Affected species included
not only ¶ salmonids, crab, and clams, but also birds such as
eagles and falcons, which feed on the ¶ tideflats. Increasing
awareness of the value of estuaries triggered current efforts
to preserve, ¶ conserve, and restore these fragile systems.
Tijuana River Estuary is uniquely key to biodiversity
Romo 2-13
(Oscar Romo. Oscar Romo, Ph.D., is a former United Nations
diplomat and now the watershed coordinator at the Tijuana
River National Estuarine Research ReserveAlpha Forma, LLC.
“Detection, Mapping and Communication of Solid Waste
Pollution Sources in the Tijuana River Valley.” Febuary 13
2013.http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sandiego/board_info/a
gendas/2013/Feb/item7/Item7_sup_doc_1.pdf)
The Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve
(TRNERR) preserves one of the largest remaining examples
of coastal wetland habitats in the southern California subregion, including beach, dune, mud flat, salt marsh, riparian,
coastal sage and upland habitats. The 2,293 acre Tijuana River
Reserve is located in Imperial Beach, Calif., situated in a highly
urbanized location, 15 miles south of San Diego and
immediately adjacent to Tijuana, Mexico. Three quarters of
the reserve’s watershed is in Mexico, so reserve programs
apply an international perspective to critical issues of habitat
restoration, endangered species management, and trash and
sediment flows from Mexico (TRNERR management plan).
The reserve is recognized as a ‘wetland of international
importance’ by the Ramsar Convention. The Tijuana River
Estuary is one of the few salt marshes remaining in Southern
California, where over 90% of wetland habitat has been lost to
development. The site is an essential breeding, feeding,
nesting ground and key stopover point on the Pacific Flyway
for over 370 species of migratory and native birds, including
the endangered Light-footed clapper rail, California least
tern, Least Bell’s vireo, and white and brown pelicans
Maquiladoras are polluting the Tijuana because of
lack of funding and law enforcement.
Saldaña 94
(Lori Saldaña. A regular contributor to Earth Times, is a writer,
public speaker and photographer who specializes in
conservation and environmental issues. June 1994. “Tijuana
River: a controversy runs through it.” San Diego Earth Times.
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0694/et0694s1.html)
Technically, some of these industrial wastes should be
disposed of in their country of origin, and that may in fact be
the United States. Under the La Paz Treaty of 1983, signed by
President Reagan and Mexican President de la Madrid,
hazardous wastes produced by an industry operating in one
country must be returned for disposal to the country that
owns that business, or disposed of in an approved hazardous
waste site in Mexico. Thus, the treaty requires that
American-owned industries operating in Mexico (commonly
known as "maquiladoras") manage their toxic waste in an
environmentally safe way. However, because of lax
enforcement, operators often dispose of these wastes
illegally in landfills in Mexico. This is the belief of Martha
Rocha Rodriquez. She lives in the Playas neighborhood of
Tijuana and for the last five years has worked with an
environmental organization known as MEBAC, the
"Movimiento Ecologista de Baja California." Last year, MEBAC
forced a company to dismantle and remove a proposed
waste incinerator plant scheduled to operate just south of
Tijuana, arguing that it would create a health risk for nearby
neighborhoods. However, another division of the plant owned by Chemical Waste Management de Mexico, and
located less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean - continues to
recycle solvents from maquiladoras. Rodriguez believes it is
possible to reduce the amount of wastes now being
produced by American-owned maquiladoras in Tijuana, but
that high program costs and a lack of enforcement of
existing laws by SEDESOL (Mexico's Secretariat of Social
Development, similar to the United State's EPA) have made
this unlikely.
Tijuana supports thousands of crucial species
NERR 10
(“Tijuana River Comprehensive Management Plan- National
Estuarine Research Reserve”. National Estuarine Research
Reserve. August 2010.
http://www.nerrs.noaa.gov/Doc/PDF/Reserve/TJR_
MgmtPlan.pdf)
¶ The tidal flushing of the Tijuana Estuary maintains a variety
of habitats, which in turn support a broad range of
organisms. A listing of plant and animal species with state or
federal listing as threatened or endangered is provided in
Appendix 3. The following provides an overview of habitats
and describes the status of regionally significant resources . a.
Habitat Overview The Tijuana River National Estuarine
Research Reserve includes the following coastal habitats
(McIlwee, 1970): • Sand dunes and beaches - Sand deposits
are continually shifted during floods and sea storms, thus
creating relatively unstable habitat. In recent years, the dune
system has become very unstable, allowing sand to be blown
into the tidal channels. • Open tidal channels and mudflats Sand, silty clay, and mixed substrates create a variety of
subtidal habitats and intertidal mudflats (Zedler, Winfield, and
Mauriello, 1978). Loss of this habitat due to elevation
increases caused by fill and sedimentation represent a major
management concern. • Salt marshes - Salt marshes have
been estimated to comprise approximately 410 acres of the
Reserve, including low marsh, middle marsh, and high marsh.
These classes correspond to the shifts in species composition,
community structure, soil salinity and texture, and tidal
conditions that occur along the onemeter elevation gradient.
• Fresh-brackish marshes - Freshwater brackish marshes
occur throughout the Reserve and are dominated by
bulrushes and cattails. • Riparian habitats – These encompass
the entire span of habitats upstream from mean high tide,
including freshwater marshes and upland areas. • Coastal
sage scrub - The bluffs adjacent to the international border
along the southern boundary of the Reserve are classified as
coastal sage scrub. This community is considered sensitive
habitat throughout San Diego County and Southern California.
• Vernal pools - A few small vernal pools can be found in the
Reserve. These shallow pools, which hold a few inches of
water during the wet months, host the San Diego fairy shrimp,
a federally endangered species. Vegetation communities are
shown in Figure 6. A key to vegetation communities is
provided in Figure 6. The northwestern part of the Reserve is
generally considered to be healthier than the southern or
eastern regions. Tidal exchange in the north is generally
better and more mudflats are exposed at low tide at the
northern end. In contrast, channel banks are steep, tidal
flushing is restricted, and low elevation communities are rare
in the Reserve's southern end (Crooks, pers. obs.). b.
Vegetation The estuary's vegetation communities were
important in the designation of the Reserve (U.S.
Department of Commerce and California Coastal Commission,
1981). In addition to having regionally significant species, the
Tijuana Estuary includes most of the plant communities
found in other southern California wetlands (Zedler, 1982).
The plant communities also have been monitored for over 30
years, giving long-term perspectives on patterns and changes
in the ecosystem (Zedler and West 2007 and references
therein). Distributions of species at Tijuana Estuary are similar
to those found in large marshes in southern California, such as
Sweetwater Marsh (Mudie, 1970), Mission Bay (Macdonald,
1967), Upper Newport Bay (Vogl, 1966; Massey and Zembal,
1979), Anaheim Bay (Massey and Zembal, 1979), and Mugu
Lagoon. The vegetation communities of the southern salt
marshes are considered distinct from marshes north of Point
Conception, because of much more limited rainfall and
hypersaline soils affecting plant growth rates and species
composition (Zedler, 1983a). Cordgrass (Spartina foliosa)
forms robust stands along tidal channels in the northern
reaches of the Reserve. Large stands of this species are rare
in the other more disturbed southern ¶ California wetlands,
and they are of particular importance as habitat for the
endangered lightfooted clapper rail (Jorgensen, 1975). Above
the cordgrass-dominated community are found ¶ several
succulents, including pickleweed (Sarcocornia pacifica) and
saltwort (Batis ¶ maritima) as dominants, and annual
pickleweed (Salicornia bigelovii) and sea blite (Suaeda ¶
esteroa). Alkali heath (Frankenia salina) is another dominant
high-marsh plant. At higher ¶ elevations, these succulents
grade into a dense matted cover of shoregrass
(Monanthochloe ¶ littoralis). At the highest elevations, another
species of pickleweed (Salicornia subterminalis) ¶ becomes codominant with shoregrass. The low-growing, open canopies of
vascular plants in southern California marshes allow light
penetration to the soil surface and subsequent development
of lush algal mats (Zedler, 1982d). Filamentous bluegreen and
green algae and dozens of species of diatoms form mats up
to one centimeter thick on moist soils. These occur at all
intertidal elevations. The early ¶ studies on the composition of
these marsh algal mats were performed at Tijuana River
Estuary in the 1970s. These algal mats are about as
productive as the overstory salt marsh plants (Zedler, 1980)
and actually play a more important role as a food source in
the estuarine food chain (Williams, 1981; Zedler, 1982c).
Reduced tidal circulation, natural flooding, prolonged
excessive freshwater input, ¶ compaction by off-road vehicles,
and the introduction of exotic species can cause changes in ¶
both salt marsh community structure and function (Zedler,
1982d). Of particular concern is ¶ the invasion of Tamarix spp.
into high marsh habitats. Salt marsh bird's beak (Cordylanthus
¶ maritimus) was once a common plant of the upper marsh
but is now listed as endangered ¶ under the Federal
Endangered Species Act. This plant likely owes its endangered
status to the ¶ filling and destruction of upper marsh habitat in
California. At the Tijuana River Estuary, salt ¶ marsh bird's beak
occurs near areas with slightly disturbed soil surfaces, such as
along the ¶ edges of paths and roads, sparsely vegetated
openings, and depressions. ¶ c. Invertebrates ¶ Invertebrates,
which include intertidal organisms such as aquatic insects,
worms, clams, and crabs, and terrestrial insects and spiders,
are likely major consumers in the salt marsh food chain and
in turn are an important food source for the fishes and birds
of the marsh (Zedler, ¶ 1982d). Crabs are perhaps the most
conspicuous invertebrates in southern California coastal salt
marshes. This is also true of the Tijuana Estuary. Burrows of
several species of crab occur throughout the lower marsh.
Another common and conspicuous inhabitant of the
estuary's tidal channels is the horn snail. Many other
invertebrate species are just as numerous but less obvious
because of their size or location within the sediments. These
include several species of clams and mud worms. Continuing
recent studies have helped characterize the benthic
community at the Tijuana Estuary. The species composition
and dominance change with the distance from the River's
mouth. Captellid and spionid polycheates are found in both
the estuary's northern and southern arms. Protothaca
staminea and Tagelus californianus are the most common
bivalves in the tidal channels (Williams et al 1996). California
horn snail (Cerithidea californica) is abundant especially in the
winter. Relatively little research has been done on the
terrestrial invertebrates of the estuary and their ecological
role, except for recent work on invasive Argentine ants
conducted by a NERRS Graduate Research Fellow from 20042007. This non-native species forms extremely aggressive
colonies, forcing out native ants and depleting the key food
source of the horned lizard, which does not eat Argentine
ants. Installation of new irrigation lines has been blamed for
Argentine ant invasion, as the ants require a year-round water
source. In general, as in other salt marshes, most insects
here probably feed on vascular plants, algae, and decaying
plants, while others are carnivores. They serve as a food
source for birds and other marsh vertebrates. Marsh insects
are also important to the pollination of marsh flowering
plants. The endangered salt marsh bird's beak, for example, is
pollinated by native bees (Zedler, 1982d). Rove beetles
(Staphylinidae spp.) burrow in mud and salt flats. They are
abundant in the estuary and appear to play a role in aerating
soils and in reversing soil compaction resulting from off-road
vehicles. Studies suggest that the largest population of the
wandering skipper ¶ (Panoquina errans) in the United States
may be at the Tijuana Estuary (Zedler, 1982d). The estuary
also supports a diverse and abundant population of coastal
tiger beetles (Cicindela ¶ sp.), of which four species may be
threatened (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1982). The ¶
Reserve is also a location for the globose dune beetle (Coelus
globosus), a federal Category 2 species. At least eleven
species of salt marsh mosquitoes breed in the saline and
brackish pools of the estuary (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
California Department of Parks and Recreation, and
Department of the Navy, 1983). Three species (Aedes
taeniorhynchus, Anopheles hermsi, and Culex tarsalis) are of
particular concern because of their potential as pests and
possible disease vectors. Currently, biochemical control
methods (BTI) are being used to combat larvae and adults in
areas where there is a high concentration of these
mosquitoes. These methods are further discussed in Chapter
5. ¶ d. Fish The small tidal creeks and channels of the estuary
support a relatively diverse population of fish including at
least 29 species representing 19 families (U.S. Department of
Commerce and California Coastal Commission, 1981; US. Fish
and Wildlife Service, 1982, Zedler et al. ¶ 1992). Since 1987,
fish assemblages have been sampled in the estuary. Catches
are often dominated by topsmelt (Atherinops affinis),
longjaw mudsucker (Gillichthys mirabilis), arrow goby
(Clevelandia ios), and California killifish (Fundulus
parvipinnis). Adult striped mullet (Mugil cepalus) are also
common. Abundance varies year to year, but total density
tends to peak in the summer and declines in the winter. The
tidal channels have been shown to function as a nursery for
commercially important fish, such as the California halibut.
Nordby (1982) found abundant eggs of the croaker family,
topsmelt, and northern anchovy. Hence, the estuary appears
to be providing nursery habitat for marine fishes; it may,
therefore, be important for sport and commercial fisheries.
Game fish such as kelp and sand bass, opaleye, and white
croaker have also been found in the estuary (U.S. Department
of Commerce and California Coastal Commission, 1981). ¶ e.
Reptiles and Amphibians The habitats within the Reserve
support at least 29 species of reptiles and amphibians
(Espinoza 1991, USGS 2001). These include the San Diego
horned lizard (Phrynosoma ¶ coronatum blainvillei), and the
Coronado skink (Eumeces skiltonianus interparietalis). Both
are species of special concern. California kingsnakes
(Lampropeltis getulus californiae) and San Diego gopher
snakes (Pituophis melanoleucus annectens) are common in
transition habitats, but are also found in the drier areas of the
salt marsh. Side blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana) are
abundant on the dry ground of the reconstructed dunes and
other sandy areas. Dunes are also home to the San ¶ Diego
horned lizard and silvery legless lizard (Annielia pulchra
pulchra). Riparian area and freshwaterponds are home to the
California toad (Bufo boreas halophilus) and the Pacific tree
frog (Hyla regilla). Coastal sage scrub is habitat for the San
Diego alligator lizard (Gerrhonotus multicarinatus webbi) and
the Great Basin fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis
biseriatus). Management of reptiles and amphibians focuses
on protecting the remaining open space in the Reserve and
restricting horse, vehicle, and foot traffic to designated areas.
The maintenance of the few freshwater ponds is important to
the life cycles of the amphibians (Espinoza 1991). ¶ f. Birds
Bird populations have been an important factor in the
special protective status attributed to ¶ the Tijuana Estuary.
Over 370 bird species are reported for the area. Birds use
the wide array ¶ of habitats present in the lower and upper
estuary, including the ocean beach and dunes, mudflats,
mudbanks, salt marshes, and riparian areas. A complete list of
birds observed at the ¶ Reserve can be obtained at the Visitor
Center. Six federally listed threatened or endangered birds
occur regularly in the Reserve: the lightfooted clapper rail
(Rallus longirostris levipes), the California least tern (Sternulae
antillarum), least Bell's vireo (Vireo belli pusillus), the
California gnatcatcher, the western snowy plover (Charadrius
alexandrinus nivosus), and the California brown pelican ¶
(Pelecanus occidentalis californicus). Belding's sparrow
(Passerculus sandwichensis ¶ beldingi) is listed as endangered
in the State of California. Other regionally or locally rare
species include the elegant tern, black skimmer, and northern
harrier. The light-footed clapper rail, California least tern,
western snowy plover, least Bell's vireo, and Belding's
savannah sparrow nest in the estuary. Their requirements and
status are discussed further since these are the species most
likely to be affected by management of the Reserve.
Wetlands Key
Wetlands are key to stop global warming
Ahmed 10
(Shafaat Ahmed. Repoter for Khaleej Times. 3 February 2010.
Khaleej Times.“Protection of Wetlands Key to Human
Survival”.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/t
heuae/2010 /February/
theuae_February90.xml&section=theuae&col=)
DUBAI — Protection of wetlands is key to human survival
and UAE plays a central role in this endeavour, a panel of
scientists observed at the World Wetlands Day seminar
organised by Dubai Municipality (DM). Being a crucial
stopover junction for thousands of migratory birds from
across the world, wetlands in the UAE play a key role in the
survival of hundreds of avian species as well as other forms
of life, environmentalists stressed at the conference themed
‘Caring for wetlands – and answer to climate change’. The
event which took place at the Dubai Municipality Club, Al
Jaddaf, hosted eminent scientists and environmental officers
including Christophe Tourenq, Emirates Wildlife Society’s
Fujairah project manager, Dr Saleem Javed from Environment
Agency Abu Dhabi and top officials from DM’s Environment
Department. Speaking on the occasion, Mohammed Abdul
Rahman, Head of Marine Environment and Wildlife, at the
Environment Department of DM, highlighted his department’s
effort in protecting and monitoring various natural water
bodies and habitats.
He pointed out that the UAE’s high priority to conservational
efforts paved way to its accession to Ramsar Convention in
2007. “Ras Al Khor Wild Life Sanctuary’s designation as the
UAE’s first and world’s 1,715th Ramsar site is a testimony to
our work.”“Wetland is an indispensible tool in enhancing the
environment, and every form of life including human beings
benefit from its various services. It is the responsibility of all
of us to ensure the quality of wetlands by stopping all kinds
of pollution,” said Abdul Rahman. Highlighting the central
role water and water bodies play in supporting and
preserving all forms of life, Christophe Tourenq said
wetlands and waterbirds can be a tools in mitigating
climate change and protecting life. “Wetlands support a lot
of species which directly or indirectly help human beings in
their daily life,” he said. “The coastal areas and island
complex of UAE is very significant to the survival of thousands
of birds. A number of areas have been identified as important
bird areas and most of these areas are in and around water
bodies. Several areas have been declared protected and
human activities have been restricted in such places,”
Tourenq said.He added, “Every person is responsible. Small
steps go a long way in fighting climate change. For example:
economical use of water, making sure you don’t pollute water
bodies, not littering the beach, switching off lights and
unplugging equipment that are not in use etc.”Speaking
exclusively to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the conference
Dr Javed said, “A healthy wetland ecosystem provides pure
water and fish among other things. It recharges groundwater
and helps in carbon storage and regulation of greenhouse
gas emissions.”“Wetlands attract hundreds of avian species,
as we see in the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a
crucial stopover junction for thousands of birds from across
the world. Proper care of these wetlands and waterbirds can
help us monitor the quality of our environment, said Dr
Javed.Highlighting EAD’s unique methods in conservation and
combating global warming Dr Javed said, “We use birds as
tool in monitoring the quality of our environment by satellite
tracking and constant surveillance. They provide us lot
indications on what’s really happening.“If the number of
birds is going down than we know that something is wrong
and we try to identify the problem. There are problems
connected with natural phenomena like climate change which
is again related to human behaviour.”Warning against
ignoring the responsibility towards wetlands he added,
“There needs to be more awareness and we need to take
greater care of our nature. If we continue our destructive
practices with regards to water, we might be submerged in
water very soon. One metre rise of sea-level due to global
warming will submerge most of Abu Dhabi’s coastline. That
seems to be water’s way of revenge against humans for their
misbehaviour.”
Mexico Key
Mexico key to global biodiversity
USFWS 12
(US Fish and Wildlife Service. “Mexico.” June 2012.
http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/factsheet-mexico.pdf).
Mexico makes up only one percent of the Earth’s land area
but is home to an amazing one-tenth of all of the species
known to science. It is also a major center for plant origins
and domestication, and a key plant and faunal dispersal
corridor. Its rainforests are among the richest reservoirs of
biological material on the planet and its diverse habitats are
home to a broad array of wildlife including many seasonal
residents that migrate to and from the U.S. and other areas.
The U.S. and Mexico share 450 species listed under the
Convention on the International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES) and 119 species listed under the Endangered
Species Act (ESA). These species depend on Mexico for their
survival, including sea turtles, gray whale, bats, condor,
jaguar, manatee, pronghorn, desert sheep, insects (such as
the monarch butterfly), and a large variety of migratory birds.
This astonishing biodiversity faces increasing threats, such as
deforestation , unsustainable land-use practices , and illegal
wildlife trade.
BioDExtinction
BioD key to laundry list of impacts
MEA 2005
(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. “Ecosystems and human
well-being: Biodiversity synthesis. ” World Resources Institute,
Washington, DC. 2005.
www.millennuimassessment.org/documents/document.354.a
spx.pdf)
■ Biodiversity is essential for ecosystem services and hence
for human well-being. Biodiversity goes beyond the
provisioning for material welfare and livelihoods to include
security, resiliency, social relations, health, and freedoms
and choices. Some people have benefited over the last
century from the conversion of natural ecosystems to humandominated ecosystems and from the exploitation of
biodiversity. At the same time, however, these losses in
biodiversity and associated changes in ecosystem services
have caused other people to experience declining well-being,
with some social groups being pushed into poverty. Main
Links among Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, and Various
Constituents of Human Well-being The MA identifies
biodiversity and the many ecosystem services that it
provides as a key instrumental and constitutive factor
determining human well-being. The MA findings support,
with high certainty, that biodiversity loss and deteriorating
ecosystem services contribute—directly or indirectly—to
worsening health, higher food insecurity, increasing
vulnerability, lower material wealth, worsening social
relations, and less freedom for choice and action. ¶ Food
Security Biological diversity is used by many rural
communities directly as an insurance and coping mechanism
to increase flexibility and spread or reduce risk in the face of
increasing uncertainty, shocks, and surprises. The availability
of this biological “safety net” has increased the security and
resilience of some local communities to external economic
and ecological perturbations, shocks, or surprises (C6.2.2,
C8.2). In a world where fluctuating commodity prices are
more the norm than the exception, economic entitlements of
the poor are increasingly becoming precarious. The
availability of an ecosystem-based food security net during
times when economic entitlements are insufficient to
purchase adequate nourishment in the market provides an
important insurance program (C8.1, C6.7). Coping
mechanisms based on indigenous plants are particularly
important for the most vulnerable people, who have little
access to formal employment, land, or market opportunities
(C6). For example, investigations of two dryland sites in Kenya
and Tanzania report local communities using wild indigenous
plants to provide alternative sources of food when harvests
failed or when sudden expenses had to be met (such as a
hospital bill). (See Table 2.1.) Another pathway through
which biodiversity can improve food security is the adoption
of farming practices that maintain and make use of
agricultural biodiversity. Biodiversity is important to
maintaining agricultural production. Wild relatives of
domestic crops provide genetic variability that can be crucial
for overcoming outbreaks of pests and pathogens and new
environmental stresses. Many agricultural communities
consider increased local diversity a critical factor for the
long-term productivity and viability of their agricultural
systems. For example, interweaving multiple varieties of rice
in the same paddy has been shown to increase productivity by
lowering the loss from pests and pathogens.¶ Vulnerability
The world is experiencing an increase in human suffering and
economic losses from natural disasters over the past several
decades. Mangrove forests and coral reefs—a rich source of
biodiversity—are excellent natural buffers against floods and
storms. Their loss or reduction in coverage has increased the
severity of flooding on coastal communities. Floods affect
more people (140 million per year on average) than all other
natural or technological disasters put together. Over the past
four decades, the number of “great” disasters has increased
by a factor of four, while economic losses have increased by a
factor of ten. During the 1990s, countries low on the Human
Development Index experienced about 20% of the hazard
events and reported over 50% of the deaths and just 5% of
economic losses. Those with high rankings on the index
accounted for over 50% of the total economic losses and less
than 2% of the deaths (C6, R11, C16). A common finding from
the various subglobal assessments was that many people
living in rural areas cherish and promote ecosystem
variability and diversity as a risk management strategy
against shocks and surprises (SG11). They maintain a
diversity of ecosystem services and are skeptical about
solutions that reduce their options. The sub-global
assessments found that diversity of species, food, and
landscapes serve as “savings banks” that rural communities
use to cope with change and ensure sustainable livelihoods
(see Peruvian, Portuguese, Costa Rican, and India sub-global
assessments).¶ Health An important component of health is
a balanced diet. About 7,000 species of plants and several
hundred species of animals have been used for human food
consumption at one time or another. Some indigenous and
traditional communities currently consume 200 or more
species. Wild sources of food remain particularly important
for the poor and landless to provide a somewhat balanced
diet (C6, C8.2.2). Overexploitation of marine fisheries
worldwide, and of bushmeat in many areas of the tropics,
has lead to a reduction in the availability of wild-caught
animal protein, with serious consequences in many countries
for human health (C4.3.4). Human health, particularly risk of
exposure to many infectious diseases, may depend on the
maintenance of biodiversity in natural ecosystems. On the
one hand, a greater diversity of wildlife species might be
expected to sustain a greater diversity of pathogens that can
infect humans. However, evidence is accumulating that
greater wildlife diversity may decrease thespread of many
wildlife pathogens to humans. The spread of Lyme disease,
the best-studied case, seems to be decreased by the
maintenance of the biotic integrity of natural ecosystems
(C11, C14).¶ Energy Security Wood fuel provides more than
half the energy used in developing countries. Even in
industrial countries such as Sweden and the United States,
wood supplies 17% and 3% of total energy consumption
respectively. In some African countries, such as Tanzania,
Uganda, and Rwanda, wood fuel accounts for 80% of total
energy consumption (SG-SAfMA). In rural areas, 95% is
consumed in the form of firewood, while in urban areas 85%
is in the form of charcoal. Shortage of wood fuel occurs in
areas with high population density without access to
alternative and affordable energy sources. In some provinces
of Zambia where population densities exceed the national
average of 13.7 persons per square kilometer, the demand for
wood has already surpassed local supply. In such areas,
people are vulnerable to illness and malnutrition because of
the lack of resources to heat homes, cook food, and boil
water. Women and children in rural poor communities are
the ones most affected by wood fuel scarcity. They must walk
long distances searching for firewood and therefore have less
time for tending crops and school (C9.4).¶ Provision of Clean
Water The continued loss of cloud forests and the
destruction of watersheds reduce the quality and availability
of water supplied to household use and agriculture. The
availability of clean drinking water is a concern in dozens of
the world’s largest cities (C27). In one of the best
documented cases, New York City took steps to protect the
integrity of watersheds in the Catskills to ensure continued
provision of clean drinking water to 9 million people.
Protecting the ecosystem was shown to be far more cost
effective than building and operating a water filtration plant.
New York City avoided $6–8 billion in expenses by protecting
its watersheds (C7, R17).¶ Social Relations Many cultures
attach spiritual and religious values to ecosystems or their
components such as a tree, hill, river, or grove (C17). Thus
loss or damage to these components can harm social
relations—for example, by impeding religious and social
ceremonies that normally bind people. (See Box 2.1.)
Damage to ecosystems, highly valued for their aesthetic,
recreational, or spiritual values can damage social relations,
both by reducing the bonding value of shared experience as
well as by causing resentment toward groups that profit
from their damage (S11, SG10).¶ Freedom of Choice and
Action Freedom of choice and action within the MA context
refers to individuals having control over what happens and
being able to achieve what they value (CF3). Loss of
biodiversity often means a loss of choices. Local fishers
depend on mangroves as breeding grounds for local fish
populations. Loss of mangroves translates to a loss in control
over the local fish stock and a livelihood they have been
pursuing for many generations and that they value. Another
example is high-diversity agricultural systems. These systems
normally produce less cash than monoculture cash crops, but
farmers have some control over their entitlements because
of spreading risk through diversity. High diversity of
genotypes, populations, species, functional types, and
spatial patches decreases the negative effects of pests and
pathogens on crops and keeps open possibilities for agrarian
communities to develop crops suited to future
environmental challenges and to increase their resilience to
climate variability and market fluctuations (C11).Another
dimension of choices relates to the future. The loss of
biodiversity in some instances is irreversible, and the value
individuals place on keeping biodiversity for future
generations—the option value—can be significant (CF6, C2).
The notion of having choices available irrespective of
whether any of them will be actually picked is an essential
constituent of the freedom aspect of well-being. However,
putting a monetary figure on option values is notoriously
difficult. We can only postulate on the needs and desires of
future generations, some of which can be very different from
today’s aspirations. ¶ Basic Materials for a Good Life and
Sustainable Livelihoods Biodiversity offers directly the
various goods—often plants, animals, and fungi—that
individuals need in order to earn an income and secure
sustainable livelihoods. In addition, it also contributes to
livelihoods through the support it provides for ecosystem
services: the agricultural labor force currently contains
approximately 22% of the world’s population and accounts
for 46% of its total labor force (C26.5.1). For example, apples
are a major cash crop in the Himalayan region in India,
accounting for 60–80% of total household income (SG3). The
region is also rich in honeybee diversity, which played a
significant role in pollinating field crops and wild plants,
thereby increasing productivity and sustaining ecosystem
functions. In the early 1980s, market demand for particular
types of apples led farmers to uproot pollinated varieties and
plant new, sterile cultivars. The pollinator populations were
also negatively affected by excessive use of pesticides. The
result was a reduction in overall apple productivity and the
extinction of many natural pollinator species (SG3). Naturebased tourism (“ecotourism”)—one of the fastest growing
segments of tourism worldwide—is a particularly important
economic sector in a number of countries and a potential
income source for many rural communities (C17.2.6). The
aggregate revenue generated by nature-based tourism in
Southern Africa was estimated to be $3.6 billion in 2000,
roughly 50% of total tourism revenue (SG-SAfMA). Botswana,
Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and
Zimbabwe each generated over $100 million in revenue
annually from nature-based tourism in 2000. In Tanzania,
tourism contributed 30% of the total GDP of the country.
Biodiversity also contributes to a range of other industries,
including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and horticulture.
Market trends vary widely according to the industry and
country involved but many bio-prospecting activities and
revenues are expected to increase over the next decades
(C10). The current economic climate suggests that
pharmaceutical bio-prospecting will increase, especially as
new methods use evolutionary and ecological knowledge.
Losses of biodiversity can impose substantial costs at local
and national scales. For example, the collapse of the
Newfoundland cod fishery in the early 1990s cost tens of
thousands of jobs, as well as at least $2 billion in income
support and retraining. Recent evidence suggests that the
preservation of the integrity of local biological communities,
both in terms of the identity and the number of species, is
important for the maintenance of plant and animal
productivity, soil fertility, and their stability in the face of a
changing environment (C11). Recent estimates from the MA
Portugal sub-global assessment indicate that environmental
expenses in that country are increasing at a rate of 3% a year
and are presently 0.7% of GDP (SG-Portugal).¶
Habitat loss and species reduction risks extinction
Tobin 90 (Richard Tobin, Associate Professor of Political
Science at SUNY-Buffalo, 1990, The Expendable Future: U.S.
Politics and the Protection of Biological Diversity, p. 13-14)
Every time a human contributes to a species’ extinction, a
range of choices and opportunities is either eliminated or
diminished. The demise of the last pupfish might have
appeared inconsequential, but the eradication of other
species could mean that an undiscovered cure for some
cancers has been carelessly discarded. The extinction of a
small bird, an innocent amphibian, or an unappealing plant
might disrupt an ecosystem, increased the incidence and
areal distribution of a disease, preclude the discovery of new
industrial products, prevent the natural recycling of some
wastes, or destroy a source of easily grown and readily
available food. By way of analogy, the anthropo-genic
extinction of a plant or animal can be compared to the
senseless destruction of a priceless Renaissance painting or
to the burning of an irreplaceable book that has never been
opened. In an era when many people believe that limits to
development are being tested or even breached, can humans
afford to risk an expendable future, to squander the infinite
potential that species offer, and to waste nature’s ability and
willingness to provide inexpensive solutions to many of
humankind’s problems? Many scientists do not believe so,
and they are fearful of the consequences of anthropogenic
extinctions. These scientists quickly admit their ignorance of
the biological consequences of most individual extinctions,
but widespread agreement exists that massive
anthropogenic extinctions can bring catastrophic results. In
fact, when compared to all other environmental problems,
human-caused extinctions are likely to be of far greater
concern. Extinction is the permanent destruction of unique
life forms and the only irreversible ecological change that
humans can cause. No matter what the effort or sincerity of
intentions, extinct species can never be replaced. “From the
standpoint of permanent despoliation of the planet,” Norman
Meyers observes, no other form of environmental
degradation “is anywhere so significant as the fallout of
species.” Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in
assessing the relative consequences of human-caused
extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to
earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of energy
supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events
might be, Wilson reasons that they can “be repaired within a
few generations. The one process ongoing…that will take
millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species
diversity by destruction of natural habitats.” David Ehrenfeld
succinctly summarizes the problem and the need for a
solution: “We are masters of extermination, yet creation is
beyond our powers… Complacency in the face of this terrible
dilemma is inexcusable.” Ehrenfeld wrote these words in the
early 1970s. Were he to write today he would likely add a
note of dire urgency. If scientists are correct in their
assessments of current extinctions and reasonably confident
about extinction rates in the near future, then a concerted
and effective response to human-caused extinctions is
essential. The chapters that follow evaluate that response in
the United States.
Keystone species are key to biodiversity which is
key to survival
Young 10 – Ruth, PhD Coastal Marine Ecology (“Biodiversity:
what it is and why it’s important”, 2-9-10,
http://www.talkingnature.com/2010/02/biodiversity/biodiver
sity-what-and-why/)
Different species within ecosystems fill particular roles, they
all have a function, they all have a niche. They interact with
each other and the physical environment to provide
ecosystem services that are vital for our survival. For
example plant species convert carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
atmosphere and energy from the sun into useful things such
as food, medicines and timber. Pollination carried out by
insects such as bees enables the production of ⅓ of our food
crops. Diverse mangrove and coral reef ecosystems provide a
wide variety of habitats that are essential for many fishery
species. To make it simpler for economists to comprehend the
magnitude of services offered by biodiversity, a team of
researchers estimated their value – it amounted to $US33
trillion per year. “By protecting biodiversity we maintain
ecosystem services” Certain species play a “keystone” role in
maintaining ecosystem services. Similar to the removal of a
keystone from an arch, the removal of these species can
result in the collapse of an ecosystem and the subsequent
removal of ecosystem services. The most well known
example of this occurred during the 19th century when sea
otters were almost hunted to extinction by fur traders along
the west coast of the USA. This led to a population explosion
in the sea otters’ main source of prey, sea urchins. Because
the urchins graze on kelp their booming population decimated
the underwater kelp forests. This loss of habitat led to
declines in local fish populations. Eventually a treaty
protecting sea otters allowed the numbers of otters to
increase which in turn controlled the urchin population,
leading to the recovery of the kelp forests and fish stocks. In
other cases, ecosystem services are maintained by entire
functional groups, such as apex predators (See Jeremy
Hance’s post at Mongabay). During the last 35 years, over
fishing of large shark species along the US Atlantic coast has
led to a population explosion of skates and rays. These skates
and rays eat bay scallops and their out of control population
has led to the closure of a century long scallop fishery. These
are just two examples demonstrating how biodiversity can
maintain the services that ecosystems provide for us, such as
fisheries. One could argue that to maintain ecosystem
services we don’t need to protect biodiversity but rather, we
only need to protect the species and functional groups that fill
the keystone roles. However, there are a couple of problems
with this idea. First of all, for most ecosystems we don’t
know which species are the keystones! Ecosystems are so
complex that we are still discovering which species play vital
roles in maintaining them. In some cases its groups of
species not just one species that are vital for the ecosystem.
Second, even if we did complete the enormous task of
identifying and protecting all keystone species, what back-up
plan would we have if an unforseen event (e.g. pollution or
disease) led to the demise of these ‘keystone’ species? Would
there be another species to save the day and take over this
role? Classifying some species as ‘keystone’ implies that the
others are not important. This may lead to the non-keystone
species being considered ecologically worthless and
subsequently over-exploited. Sometimes we may not even
know which species are likely to fill the keystone roles. An
example of this was discovered on Australia’s Great Barrier
Reef. This research examined what would happen to a coral
reef if it were over-fished. The “over-fishing” was simulated
by fencing off coral bommies thereby excluding and removing
fish from them for three years. By the end of the experiment,
the reefs had changed from a coral to an algae dominated
ecosystem – the coral became overgrown with algae. When
the time came to remove the fences the researchers expected
herbivorous species of fish like the parrot fish (Scarus spp.) to
eat the algae and enable the reef to switch back to a coral
dominated ecosystem. But, surprisingly, the shift back to coral
was driven by a supposed ‘unimportant’ species – the bat fish
(Platax pinnatus). The bat fish was previously thought to feed
on invertebrates – small crabs and shrimp, but when offered a
big patch of algae it turned into a hungry herbivore – a cow of
the sea – grazing the algae in no time. So a fish previously
thought to be ‘unimportant’ is actually a keystone species in
the recovery of coral reefs overgrown by algae! Who knows
how many other species are out there with unknown
ecosystem roles! In some cases it’s easy to see who the
keystone species are but in many ecosystems seemingly
unimportant or redundant species are also capable of
changing niches and maintaining ecosystems. The more
biodiverse an ecosystem is, the more likely these species will
be present and the more resilient an ecosystem is to future
impacts. Presently we’re only scratching the surface of
understanding the full importance of biodiversity and how it
helps maintain ecosystem function. The scope of this task is
immense. In the meantime, a wise insurance policy for
maintaining ecosystem services would be to conserve
biodiversity. In doing so, we increase the chance of
maintaining our ecosystem services in the event of future
impacts such as disease, invasive species and of course,
climate change. This is the international year of biodiversity –
a time to recognize that biodiversity makes our survival on
this planet possible and that our protection of biodiversity
maintains this service.
Feminism
Pregnancy-based sex discrimination in Mexico is
widespread
Leahy '04 (Sen. Patrick Leahy (d-vt) "PregnancyBased Sex Discrimination In Mexico’S Maquiladora
Industry" page online @
http://capitolwords.org/date/1997/07/29/S82583_pregnancy-based-sex-discrimination-in-mexicosmaqu/)
DVTMr. President, I want to bring to the attention of
the Senate that
Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Rights Fund,
and Mexico's National Association of Democratic Lawyers
have asked the U.S. National Administrative Office [U.S.
NAO] to investigate reports of widespread pregnancy-based
sex discrimination in Mexico's maquiladora industry.These
organizations report that maquiladoras routinely administer
pregnancy exams to prospective female employees in order
to deny them work, in blatant violation of their privacy.
Female employees face invasive questions about
contraceptive use, sexual activity, and menses schedules. In
some cases, women who become pregnant after being hired
are forced to resign. Maquiladora owners fear that pregnant
women will reduce production standards and that legally
mandated maternity benefits will drain industry money. The
report concludes that the Mexican Government has failed to
investigate these discriminatory practices in violation of
their own laws and NAFTA.The request for an investigation is the first of its
kind that has been brought before the U.S. NAO. The case represents an important
opportunity to convey to our trading partners and United States corporations who
have operations in Mexico that sex discrimination is intolerable, illegal, and in
violation of NAFTA.As we consider expanding NAFTA benefits to the Caribbean Basin
and other South American countries, the United States should demonstrate to our
trading partners that we take labor rights violations seriously. I hope the U.S. NAO
will consider this case expeditiously and I look forward to its report. The priviledge of
free trade and its economic benefits should be conditional upon the trading partners
abiding by the same labor and environmental laws.
Maquiladora workers are mostly women and are
subjected to prejudice and sexual harassment
LAB 3/8/ 2012 Latin American Bureau is an independent
charitable organisation based in London providing news,
analysis and information on Latin America
http://lab.org.uk/mexico-planting-a-seed-for-change-inwomens-labour-rights
The vast majority of workers employed in maquila factories
in Mexico are women, reflecting the subordination of
women in society and the sexual division of labour. Other
occupational groups at the bottom of the value chains or in the margins of the
economy, such as paid domestic workers, are also comprised mostly of women.
Informal labour conditions create an environment in which
women suffer from constant violation of their labour rights,
yet they usually have no other choice but to participate in
the economy under such conditions.¶ In the maquila industry
in Mexico, women continue to face constant factory
shutdowns, layoffs, sexual harassment and even death
threats. Increased competition for fewer jobs makes women
reluctant to complain about these rights violations. Obliged
to remain silent, women workers are denied access to social,
maternity and health benefits. Moreover, government labour
and economic policies consistently ignore the effects on the
lives of women of entry to the workforce under such
conditions: their family relationships and ties to the
community are affected and they experience significant
deterioration in their quality of life .¶ Labour justice for
women is not part of the policy agenda of any political party,
legislator or state authority in Mexico. For this reason, the
battle fought by women's labour rights organisations is so
important. However, they confront increasingly difficult
conditions, not only because of their lack of resources and
job insecurity, but also because of the violence directed
towards them. A recent report by the Special Rapporteur on
the Situation of Human Rights Defenders reveals that, in
Mexico, labour rights defenders submitted the largest
number of complaints of attacks against their physical
integrity from non-State agents.
Maquiladora labor laws go unenforced
Edward J. Williams 2001, Ph.D. Professor of Political
Science “THE UNIONIZATION OF THE MAQUILADORA
INDUSTRY ANDTHE NORTH AMERICAN AGREEMENT ON
LABOR COOPERATION: STRATEGIES CONCEIVED AND
FRUSTRATED”
http://www.academia.edu/2781239/The_Unionization_of_th
e_Maquiladora_Industry_and_the_North_American_Agreeme
nt_on_Labor_Cooperation_Strategies_Conceived_and_Frustr
ated¶
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has
sparked significant¶ controversy among social scientists and
policymakers regarding its effects on member nations'¶
economies. However, few observers have systematically
examined the potential effectiveness of ¶ the treaty's labor
side accord for promoting worker rights in the three member
countries.¶ Specifically, we are interested in the North
American Agreement on Labor Cooperation's¶ (NAALC)
potential as a tool for cross-border efforts to unionize the
maquiladora industry.¶ Through an analysis of the accord, the
political context for union activism in the U.S. and¶ Mexico,
and the cases brought before the NAALC to date, we argue
that the agreement can only¶ indirectly help organizing
efforts. The NAALC has weak enforcement powers that will
unlikely¶ counteract entrenched political actors who oppose
independent unionism in the maquiladoras.¶ Rather than
compelling member countries to enforce their own labor
laws, the accord's potential¶ positive role for workers will be
its promotion of cross-border alliances and its potential to¶
provide negative publicity for anti-labor policies and
employers. In this light, the NAALC is¶ neither a panacea nor
an obstacle to cross-border organizing, but a modest tool in
workers' uphill¶ battle to organize the maquiladora sector.
Maquiladoras have high instances of rape
Mike Westfall 6/8/2009 –The Cutting Edge ‘Maquiladoras-American Industry Creates Modern-Day Mexican Slaves’
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=113
55
¶ An article titled "Maquila Neoslavery" by journalist and
human rights activist Gary MacEoin in the National Catholic
Reporter, noted that a typical maquila 9-hour day quota for a
woman is to iron 1,200 shirts. MacEoin said “few survive the
unhealthy working conditions, poor ventilation, verbal
abuse, strip searches, and sexual harassment for more them
six or seven years.¶ Dr. Ruth Rosenbaum, executive director
CREA, said the wages do not enable them to meet basic
human needs of their family for nutrition, housing, clothing,
and non-consumables and that one maquiladora worker
provides only 19.8 percent of what a family of four needs to
live.¶ Author Rachel Stohr talked of the brutal treatment,
the wage slavery, of how the Mexican government gains
economically from these factories and how the enforcement
of Mexican labor laws is just not happening in a 2004
University of New Mexico story.¶ To the U.S. companies who
run maquiladora factories, the workers are expendable and
only the financial investment is important. According to Rev.
David Schilling, director of ICCR’s Global Corporate
Accountability Program, for years religious institutional
investors have been pressing corporations to pay their
Mexican employees a sustainable living wage.¶ Martha Ojeda,
director of Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, said
“they work long productive hours for the world’s biggest
corporations and still cannot provide the most basic needs
for their families, they cannot afford to consume the items
they produce”.¶ Brian Chasnoff wrote in the Comite
Fronterizo de Obreros that the Immigration Clinic of San Jose
says that it hears of so much rape in the maquiladoras that it
is disgusting.
Human Rights
Squo
Maquiladora's Rights are unprotected in the squo
National Academics Press '03 ("Safety is Seguridad:
A Workshop Summary" book online
@http://books.google.com/books?id=Bi2DjVu9trQ
C&dq=%22united+states+should%22+maquila&sou
rce=gbs_navlinks_s)
There was also a discussion regarding the need for a multinational approach. Workshop, participants thought that the United
States could work with representatives of Spanish-speaking
countries to assess, develop, and improve materials in the
context of home countries. The United States could also work with Mexico
in particular (and with Mexico's Secretary for Health) to develop materials for use
with workers in both countries, and for training workers who will immigrate or who
move back and forth across the border. It may
be useful for the United
Slates to work with the U.S.-Mexico Border Health
Association, the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science, the Pan
American Health Organization and similar organizations. And
finally the United States should work with maquiladora
health and safety support networks
(American Public Health
Association, American Industrial Hygiene Association, Mexican Industrial Hygiene
Association).
The workshop participants were greatly appreciative of the opportunity provided by
NIOSH for them to come together to discuss these issues. The diversity of the
participants was noted. Participants included representatives from government
agencies, community organizations, academic research centers, employers, outreach
workers, and union members. Discussions were open, honest, and productive.
Together there was agreement on the importance of the
problem, particularly in relation to the numbers of workers
affected, the risks inherent both in common occupations for
Latinos and in workers with little or no command of English,
and in the lack of power to affect change or ask for their
rights. The power differential between workers and
employers is particularly great because of the lack of legal
status of many workers, even when employers recruit across
the border. The need to protect all workers, as reflected in
the NIOSH initiative in convening this conference, was
praised by the participants.
Human rights are integral to U.S. Mexico relations
Wilkinson 4/30/13 LA Times- ‘Activists urge Obama to
speak out on Mexico's human rights record’
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/30/world/la-fg-wn-mexico-obamavisit-human-rights-20130430¶ Any discussion of human rights issues would
¶ Tracy
probably occur behind closed doors.¶ Rights organizations say Obama is missing an
opportunity to criticize Mexico's record at a time when Peña Nieto can avoid being
blamed for it. He assumed the presidency just five months ago, at the end of
President Felipe Calderon’s six-year term.¶ Under Calderon, the government fought
powerful drug cartels and arrested key criminal figures. But killings, kidnappings and
other severe human rights abuses by the police and military soared, according to
human rights groups, as well as testimony collected by The Times. During that period,
the Obama administration repeatedly voiced its support for Calderon’s efforts.¶
"Presidents
Obama and Peña Nieto have a golden
opportunity to address issues affecting the lives of people on
both sides of the border," Frank Jannuzi, interim executive director of
Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Tuesday.¶ "Respecting human
rights must be integral to any joint plan for further bilateral
cooperation between the two countries -- not just words
during a presidential photo-op,” he added. “Do not squander
this moment.Ӧ Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas program at the
New York-based Human Rights Watch group, wrote to Obama this week to chastise
the administration for its “uncritical” support of Calderon’s policies and failure to
condemn abuses.¶
“This visit provides an ideal opportunity to
break that silence by demonstrating the U.S. government’s
concern for Mexico’s human rights problems and [the new
government’s] commitment to supporting a new approach,”
Vivanco wrote.¶ He noted that Peña Nieto’s administration has said that it would
“adjust” the drug-war strategy.¶ Current and former officials from Mexico and the
United States told The Times last week that one of those adjustments will be to
reduce the role U.S. advisors play in Mexico's security affairs.¶ Obama on Friday
travels from Mexico to Costa Rica, where he will meet with several Central American
leaders. With that in mind, a coalition of human rights groups from the region urged
the leaders Tuesday to confront the abuses faced by thousands of Central Americans
who travel across Mexico every year in an effort to reach the U.S.¶ Many from
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, especially, are kidnapped by criminal drugand-extortion gangs -- often working in cahoots with Mexican police -- and held for
ransom, forced into slave labor or killed.¶
Key to Global
Human rights promotion in Mexico is key for human
rights globally
Kenneth Roth 2/24/10 executive director of Human Rights
Watch, ‘Empty Promises?’
http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/02/24/empty-promises
After eight years of the Bush administration, with its torture
of suspected terrorists and disregard for international law,
Barack Obama's victory in the November 2008 U.S.
presidential election seemed a breath of fresh air to human
rights activists. Obama took office at a moment when the
world desperately needed renewed U.S. leadership. In his
inaugural address, Obama immediately signaled that, unlike
Bush, he would reject as false "the choice between our
safety and our ideals."¶ Obama faces the challenge of
restoring the United States' credibility at a time when
repressive governments -- emboldened by the increasing
influence of authoritarian powers such as China and Russia -seek to undermine the enforcement of international human
rights standards. As he put it when accepting the Nobel Peace
Prize, the United States cannot "insist that others follow the
rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves." His
Nobel speech in Oslo also affirmed the U.S. government's
respect for the Geneva Conventions. "Even as we confront a
vicious adversary that abides by no rules," Obama argued, "I
believe the United States of America must remain a standard
bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different
from those whom we fight. That is a source of our
strength."¶
When it comes to promoting human rights at home and abroad, there has undoubtedly been a marked improvement in presidential rhetoric. However, the translation of those words
into deeds remains incomplete.¶ AN INCOMPLETE REVERSAL¶ Obama moved rapidly to reverse the most abusive aspects of the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism. Two days after taking office, he insisted that
all U.S. interrogators, including those from the CIA, abide by the stringent standards adopted by the U.S. military in the wake of the Abu Ghraib debacle. He also ordered the shuttering of all secret CIA detention facilities, where
many suspects "disappeared" and were tortured between 2001 and 2008. Finally, he promised to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year.¶ But it is not enough for the government to stop using
torture; perpetrators must also be punished. The Obama administration has so far refused to investigate and prosecute those who ordered or committed torture -- a necessary step to prevent future administrations from
committing the crime. While in office, as he did during the campaign, Obama has repeatedly spoken of wanting to "look forward, not back." And although Attorney General Eric Holder has launched a "preliminary review" of
interrogators who exceeded orders, he has until now refrained from prosecuting those who ordered torture or wrote the legal memos justifying it. This lets senior officials -- arguably those who are most culpable -- off the hook.¶
Meanwhile, Obama's one-year deadline for closing Guantánamo has slipped because of congressional opposition and the complexity of deciding how to handle the cases of more than 200 detainees. The real issue, however, is less
when Guantánamo will close than how. Human Rights Watch and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have urged the administration to prosecute detainees in regular federal courts, repatriate them, or resettle them in
safe countries willing to accept them. However, the White House has insisted on maintaining two other options: prosecuting suspects before military commissions or continuing to hold them indefinitely without charge or trial.¶
The Obama administration's military commissions would avoid the most problematic aspect of the Bush administration's commissions -- the power to introduce at trial statements obtained through coercion and abuse. But the
Obama commissions, as approved by Congress, continue to suffer from a lack of independence (their judges are military officers, who must report to superiors in the chain of command), controversy about the offenses they cover
(some are not clearly war crimes or were not clearly criminal at the time they were committed), and untested rules of procedure (unlike regular courts or even courts-martial, which have well-established procedures, the rules for
military commissions are being constructed largely from scratch). These due process shortcomings are likely to keep the public and the press focused on the fairness of the trials accorded suspects, rather than the gravity of their
alleged crimes.¶ ¶ Obama has also tried to distinguish himself from Bush in his approach to detaining suspects without charge or trial. The new administration has abandoned Bush's claim of inherent executive authority and
relied instead on an interpretation of Congress' 2001 authorization to use military force against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated groups. But both approaches still permit the detention of suspects not captured on a traditional
battlefield, such as in Afghanistan. That is a controversial approach because it permits U.S. soldiers or law enforcement officials to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists anywhere in the world without regard to the due process
standards of the United States or any other country.¶ ¶ Obama's refusal to end the use of military commissions and detention without trial risks perpetuating the spirit of Guantánamo even after the physical facility has been
shut.¶ ¶ STREET CRED¶ ¶ The Bush administration had difficulty encouraging foreign leaders to respect human rights because of its perceived arrogance, hypocrisy, and unilateralism. Since taking office, Obama has worked hard
to restore U.S. credibility.¶ ¶ Obama's speeches in Accra, Cairo, Moscow, Oslo, and Shanghai have been a key vehicle for promoting a renewed U.S. human rights agenda. Rather than merely preaching abstract principles, Obama
has drawn examples from the United States' checkered history and his own life story to encourage other nations to respect human rights. The humility in this approach avoids Bush's hectoring tone and places the United States
squarely within the community of nations as a country that, like others, struggles to respect human rights and benefits when it does so.¶ ¶ In Accra, in a rebuke to President Bill Clinton's embrace of authoritarian African leaders in
the 1990s, Obama observed, "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions," such as "strong parliaments; honest police forces; independent judges; an independent press; a vibrant private sector; a civil society."
However, Obama has not put sustained pressure on such U.S. allies as Paul Kagame of Rwanda or Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia to reform their increasingly authoritarian rule. Forceful U.S. condemnations have been largely limited to
such pariahs as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and the military junta in Guinea.¶ ¶ In Cairo, Obama rejected Bush's attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq as an exercise in democracy promotion, declaring
that "no system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other." But he insisted nonetheless that the United States remains committed "to governments that reflect the will of the people." He stressed the
importance of principled conduct even when it works against short-term U.S. interests, suggesting that, unlike Bush, he would accept an electoral victory by Egypt's Islamist opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood.¶ ¶
Frustrating as that comment might have been to the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Obama has generally shown too much deference to his hosts. He has not publicly criticized U.S. allies in the Middle East that
violate democratic principles, nor is there any evidence that he has privately encouraged these authoritarian governments to move in a more democratic direction. For example, Washington has promised Cairo that there will be
no human rights conditions placed on U.S. economic assistance to Egypt and has acquiesced in the Egyptian government's demand that all funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development earmarked for NGOs go only to
those groups that comply with the Mubarak government's onerous restrictions. Obama's desire to maintain close relations with Mubarak, especially in the hope that he might assist in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
seems to have taken precedence over the human rights principles Obama articulated in his Cairo speech.¶ ¶ In Moscow, Obama met with civil-society representatives and praised the vital role they play in Russian society. He
explained that criticisms and tough questions from U.S. civil-society organizations help him make better decisions and strengthen the United States -- a bold statement in a country where NGOs monitoring human rights or
promoting government accountability are routinely harassed. Yet his administration has not applied sustained pressure on the Russian government to stop trying to silence leaders of NGOs. Nor has Obama warned Russian leaders
that serious abuses, such as the brazen murders of activists and journalists fighting human rights abuses in the North Caucasus, could damage the bilateral relationship.¶ ¶ Similarly, in China, Obama followed in the footsteps of
successive U.S. presidents by downplaying the importance of human rights in favor of promoting trade, economic ties, and diplomatic cooperation. Before a handpicked audience of "future Chinese leaders" in Shanghai, he spoke
of the United States' journey up from slavery and the struggles for women's and workers' rights, making clear that the United States, too, has a far-from-perfect human rights record. He affirmed the United States' bedrock belief
"that all men and women are created equal, and possess certain fundamental rights." However, in a question-and-answer session, he seemed to suggest that China's draconian "great firewall" on the Internet was a reflection of
different "traditions," rather than demanding that it be torn down. That remark led to a storm of criticism from Chinese bloggers, and Obama left the country appearing to be in thrall to Chinese economic power and barely
interested in risking anything to protect the rights of the 1.3 billion Chinese still living under a dictatorship.¶ ¶ In a speech at Georgetown University a few weeks later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton justified this approach as
"principled pragmatism," and administration officials have spoken privately of building up political capital to press China on human rights in the future. But there is no such pressure today. From Clinton's February 2009 statement
that human rights "can't interfere" with other U.S. interests in China to Obama's refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama in October, Washington has consistently failed to confront China's authoritarian rulers on questions of religious
and political freedom.¶ ¶ MULTILATERALISM LITE¶ ¶ During the 2008 election campaign, Obama promised to replace Bush's notorious unilateralism with a greater commitment to cooperation, alliance building, and engagement
with adversaries. One early symbol of this new approach was the decision to reverse Bush's policy and authorize U.S. participation in the UN Human Rights Council -- an important step toward trying to salvage that troubled
institution. The 47-member council has been dominated by authoritarian governments since its inception in June 2007. Its members have incessantly criticized Israel and have generally seemed more concerned with protecting
abusive leaders than condemning them for human rights violations.¶ ¶ But the positive step of joining the council was significantly offset in September, when Washington distanced itself from a council-sponsored report -- written
by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone -- that accused Israel (as well as Hamas) of war crimes during its December 2008-January 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip and called for the perpetrators to be brought to
justice. Washington's strong criticism of the report called into question Obama's commitment to the impartial application of human rights principles to friends and foes alike. The move was particularly unfortunate because the
report broke new ground for the council by criticizing an Israeli adversary, Hamas. Obama had it right in Oslo, when he said that "only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting."
Unfortunately, he has not yet applied that insight to Israel.¶ ¶ The Obama administration has also taken a more positive approach to international law than the wary and often hostile Bush administration did. Accelerating a trend
that began in the late Bush years, Obama has actively supported the work of the International Criminal Court, especially in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as, more recently, in Kenya. For the first time,
U.S. officials have participated as observers in deliberations about the tribunal's future.¶ ¶ The United States is also embracing certain UN human rights treaties, after an eight-year hiatus. It signed the new Convention on the
Rights of People with Disabilities. In October, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that the laws of war should be amended to make it easier for states to fight irregular armed groups, Susan Rice, the U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, pushed back by reaffirming Washington's commitment to the Geneva Conventions -- a position that Obama himself reiterated in Oslo.¶ ¶ Yet there have been limits to Obama's commitment to
international law. His administration has sent mixed signals about a 1997 treaty banning antipersonnel land mines, first announcing that it would not sign the treaty and then saying that a policy review was still ongoing, even
though the United States has not used, produced, or exported these weapons in the 12 years since the treaty was established. The administration has so far failed to seize this easy opportunity to embrace an important
multilateral treaty. Similarly, the administration has not yet joined many of its NATO allies in endorsing the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use of these indiscriminate weapons, even though the U.S.
military has not used them since 2003 and recognizes the danger they pose to civilians. And although the Obama administration has declared that it plans to ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, it has not pressed for Senate ratification of it, nor has it pressed for Senate ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States has the dubious distinction of being the
only country other than Somalia not to have ratified the children's rights treaty and finds itself in the unenviable company of only Iran, Nauru, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga when it comes to the trea ty on women's rights.¶ ¶
DESTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT¶ ¶ Obama has rightfully rejected Bush's policy of dealing with repressive governments mainly by refusing to talk to them. His new approach has been most visible in Myanmar (also called Burma) and
Sudan, where U.S. envoys have increased communication with senior officials without abandoning pressure on their governments to curb repression. In the case of Sudan, despite some mixed signals, the administration has
managed to engage the government on the importance of curbing violence in Darfur and southern Sudan without speaking directly with President Bashir, who has been indicted as a war criminal.¶ ¶ In Central Asia, however, this
emphasis on engaging authoritarian regimes has yielded disappointing results. In the highly repressive nations of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the dominant U.S. concern is sustaining military supply lines into neighboring
Afghanistan, the Obama administration has refrained from publicly articulating specific human rights concerns. It has limited itself instead to general statements about U.S. support for democracy and the rule of law while
stressing U.S. respect for the sovereign prerogatives of these countries' autocratic leaders. The administration has also largely squandered the opportunity to push for reform in Kazakhstan, despite the fact that its repressive
government was particularly susceptible to pressure in the months before it assumed the rotating chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.¶ ¶ In Afghanistan, Obama administration officials
recognized from the outset that abusive and corrupt warlords linked to President Hamid Karzai's government were fueling the Taliban's popularity throughout the country. After Karzai's tainted electoral victory in August, the
administration pushed his government to distance itself from some officials with blood on their hands or ill-gotten gains in their pockets. However, it is not yet clear whether Washington is prepared to sever its own ties with some
of these tainted officials, such as the president's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a powerful figure in Kandahar who is reportedly on the CIA payroll despite being connected to drug traffickers. Nor is there any indication that
U.S. Special Forces will abandon the abusive militia they have hired in provinces such as Herat and Uruzgan.¶ ¶ Across the border in Pakistan, the Obama administration has been providing conditional military aid to the elected
government -- a more principled approach than its predecessor's, which unconditionally supported the autocratic rule of General Pervez Musharraf. Washington also accepted the reinstatement of ousted Supreme Court Chief
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, even though his constitutional rulings and his revival of corruption charges could imperil President Asif Ali Zardari, a U.S. partner. Still, Obama has not taken up the cases of thousands of people who
disappeared during Musharraf's rule. Nor has he pushed for human rights abusers from the Pakistani military, including Musharraf himself, to be held accountable.¶ ¶ Closer to home, in Latin America, Obama has cooperated with
regional allies far more than his predecessor did. Unlike Bush, who tacitly accepted the 2002 coup attempt against Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Obama was quick to join regional allies in condemning the ouster of Honduran
President Manuel Zelaya last June and calling for his reinstatement -- even if the administration did not adequately pressure the de facto government to accept Zelaya's return.¶ ¶ The White House has rightly deferred
consideration of a much-sought-after free-trade agreement with Colombia, whose government has failed to dismantle the highly abusive paramilitary forces responsible for the murder of hundreds of trade unionists and others.
Genuinely dismantling those paramilitary forces, and holding their leaders and accomplices accountable, should be a prerequisite to any free-trade agreement. At the same time, however, Obama has continued the misguided
Bush-era policy of certifying the Colombian military's compliance with the human rights standards necessary to receive U.S. military aid -- despite an ongoing atmosphere of impunity for the soldiers and officers responsible for
Obama has similarly fallen short in Mexico, where
the U.S. government promised to contribute $1.35 billion
over several years to the government for equipment and
training to combat drug trafficking. Roughly 15 percent of
these funds are dependent on Mexico's compliance with
certain human rights requirements, including bringing
military abuses under the jurisdiction of civilian courts.
Mexico has utterly failed to meet that requirement, but the
State Department has nevertheless allowed a portion of
these funds to be delivered. All of this calls into question
Obama's commitment to curbing military abuses and ending
official impunity south of the border.¶ ¶ WALKING THE WALK¶ ¶
From a human rights perspective, there is no doubt that the
Obama White House has done better than the Bush
widespread extrajudicial executions.¶ ¶
administration. As one would expect from so eloquent a
president, Obama has gotten the rhetoric largely right. The
challenge remains to translate poetic speeches into prosaic
policy -- and live up to the principles he has so impressively
articulated. Making that shift will not be easy, but the
consistent application of human rights principles is essential
if Washington is to redeem its reputation and succeed in
promoting the global values that Obama rightly believes are
the key to prosperity and stability throughout the world.
Those Kantian Ethics doe
Arnold et. Al ‘8 [Denis G. Arnold and Norman E. Bowie,
Professor Arnold joined the Belk College of Business in 2008.
Previously he was a tenured faculty member and Director of
the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville, “Sweatshops and
Respect for persons”,
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~davis194/MNC3.pdf, KP]
Critics of sweatshops frequently ground their protests in
appeals to human dignity and human rights. Arguably, Kantian
ethics provides a philosophical basis for such moral
pronouncements. The key principle here is Kant's second
formulation of the categorical imperative: "Act so that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
another, always as an end and never as a means only." ^ The
requires that we
respect people. One significant feature of the idea of respect for
persons is that its derivation and application can be assessed
independently of other elements of Kantian moral
popular expression of this principle is that morality
philosophy. Sympathetic readers need not embrace all
aspects of Kant's system of ethics in order to grant the merit
of Kant's arguments for the second formulation of the
categorical imperative.'^ This is because Kant's defense of
respect for persons is grounded in the uncontroversial claim
that humans are capable of rational, self-governing activity.
We believe that individuals with a wide range of theoretical
commitments can and should recognize the force of Kant's
arguments concerning respect for persons. Kant did not simply
assert that persons are entitled to respect, he provided an elaborate argument for
that conclusion. Persons
ought to be respected because persons
have dignity. For Kant, an object that has dignity is beyond
price. Employees have a dignity that machines and capital do
not have. They have dignity because they are capable of moral activity. As free
beings capable of self governance they are responsible
beings, since freedom and self-governance are the
conditions for responsibility. Autonomous responsible
beings are capable of making and following their own laws;
they are not simply subject to the causal laws of nature. Anyone who recognizes that
he or she is free should recognize that he or she is responsible (that he or she is a
moral being). As Kant argues, the
fact that one is a moral being
entails that one possesses dignity.
Exctinction
Failure to protect human rights makes extinction
inevitable
Human Rights Web, 94 (An Introduction to the Human
Rights Movement Created on July 20, 1994 / Last edited on
January 25, 1997, http://www.hrweb.org/intro.html)
The United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and UN Human Rights convenants were written and
implemented in the aftermath of the Holocaust, revelations
coming from the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the Bataan
Death March, the atomic bomb, and other horrors smaller in
magnitude but not in impact on the individuals they
affected. A whole lot of people in a number of countries had a
crisis of conscience and found they could no longer look the
other way while tyrants jailed, tortured, and killed their
neighbors.
Many also realized that advances in technology and changes
in social structures had rendered war a threat to the
continued existence of the human race. Large numbers of
people in many countries lived under the control of tyrants,
having no recourse but war to relieve often intolerable living
conditions. Unless some way was found to relieve the lot of
these people, they could revolt and become the catalyst for
another wide-scale and possibly nuclear war. For perhaps
the first time, representatives from the majority of
governments in the world came to the conclusion that basic
human rights must be protected, not only for the sake of the
individuals and countries involved, but to preserve the human
race.
Human Rights Promotion
US incorporation of customary international law
prevents extinction
Rhonda Copelon, Professor of Law and Director of the
International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic, 1999, 3
N.Y. City L. Rev. 59, p. L/N
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War
despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the international
arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the
superiority [*72] of the U.S. version of rights, to rebuild
popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and
jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in the face
of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by
official and private actors, globalization of the market
economy, and military and environmental depredation, the
human rights framework is gaining new force and new
dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of
people in different parts of the world, particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who
understand the protection of human rights as a matter of
individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also
emerging is a notion of third-generation rights, encompassing
collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state
basis and that call for new mechanisms of accountability,
particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights
include human-centered sustainable development,
environmental protection, peace, and security. 38 Given the
poverty and inequality in the United States as well as our
role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human
rights framework to bear on both domestic and foreign
policy.
Econ
Reforms Key to Econ
Rights solves economy
¶ Weissbrodt et. Al ‘3 [David Weissbrodt and Muria
Kruger; Professor David S. Weissbrodt is a distinguished and
widely published scholar of international human rights law.
He teaches international human rights law, administrative
law, immigration law, and torts. October 2003,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3133689.pdf “Norms on
the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other
Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”, KP]¶
There is also increasing reason to believe that greater
respect for human rights by compa- ¶ nies leads to greater
sustainability in emerging markets4 and better business
performance.5 For example, observance of human rights aids businesses by
protecting and maintaining their ¶ corporate reputation, and creating a
stable and peaceful society in which they can prosper ¶ and
attract the best and brightest employees.6 Moreover, consumers have
demonstrated that ¶ they are willing to pay attention to
standards and practices used by a business that observes ¶
human rights and may even boycott products that are
produced in violation of human rights ¶ standards.7 Similarly,
there is evidence that a growing proportion of investors is
seeking to pur- ¶ chase shares in socially responsible
companies.8 All in all, business enterprises have increased ¶
their power in the world.9 International, national, state, and
local lawmakers are realizing that this power must be
confronted, and that the human rights obligations of
business enterprises, in particular, must be addressed.
Long-term revenues outweigh
Hillemans ‘03[Carolin F. Hillemanns; German lawyer with
solid management experience of an international nongovernmental organisation, and strong background in general
public international law and corporate social responsibility,
8/26/03, “UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational
Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to
Human
Rights”http://www.germanlawjournal.com/pdfs/Vol04No10/
PDF_Vol_04_No_10_1065-1080_European_Hillemanns.pdf
, KP]
Although the business community will have to bear the costs
of implementing
mechanisms to ensure compliance with the Norms, a stable
and regulated society is a prerequisite for the successful
operation of a company. The costs should accordingly be seen
as a good investment that will pay for themselves in the form
of higher future revenues. 178
Poor Working conditions hamper economy
Dorman 2000 (The Economics of Safety, Health, and WellBeing at Work: An Overview, Peter Dorman
InFocus Program on SafeWork, International Labour
Organisation
The Evergreen State College
May, 2000, http://oit.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/--ed_protect/---protrav/--safework/documents/publication/wcms_110382.pdf) D.R
Occupational injury and illness are matters of health, but
they are also matters of economics, since¶ they stem from
work, and work is an economic activity. The economic
perspective on¶ occupational safety and health (OSH)
encompasses both causes and consequences: the role of¶
economic factors in the etiology of workplace ill-health and
the effects this has on the economic¶ prospects for workers,
enterprises, nations, and the world as a whole. It is therefore
a very broad¶ perspective, but it is not complete, because
neither the causation nor the human significance of¶ OSH can
be reduced to its economic elements. The purpose of this
paper will be to indicate the¶ most important contributions
economic analysis has made to our understanding and
management¶ of OSH, and to suggest directions for future
work in this area.
Mexico is one of America’s Leading Trade Partners
Lee 2012 (“The State of Trade, Competitiveness and
Economic ¶ Well-being in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region” Erik
Lee¶ Christopher E. Wilson¶ Working Paper Series on the State
of the U.S.-Mexico Border¶ Please Cite Only With Authors’
Permission¶ June 2012) D.R
Commerce between the United States and Mexico is one of
the great—yet underappreciated—¶ success stories of the
global economy. In fact, in 2011 U.S.-Mexico goods and
services trade ¶ probably reached the major milestone of
one-half trillion dollars with virtually no recognition.1 ¶ The
United States is Mexico’s top trading partner, and Mexico—
which has gained¶ macroeconomic stability and expanded its
middle class over the last two decades—is the ¶ United
States’second largest export market and third largest trading
partner. Seventy percent ¶ of bilateral commerce crosses the
border via trucks, meaning the border region is literally ¶
where “the rubber hits the road” for bilateral relations. This
also means that not only California ¶ and Baja California, but
also Michigan and Michoacán, all have a major stake in
efficient and ¶ secure border management.
)
Improving Maquiladora’s is key to Competitiveness
Hernández 2011 (“Impact of Central America Maquiladoras
in Economic Growth and Employment” José G. Vargashernández, M.B.A.; Ph.D. ¶ M.N.E.E. Viridiana Núñez-López ¶
University Center for Economic and Managerial Studies ¶
University of Guadalajara) D.R
The activity of assembling high-tech products is a facilitator
of potentialities for both employing human resources ¶ with
higher levels of professional training and for investments in
human capital. The orientation towards the ¶ promotion of
foreign direct investment for the creation of the
maquiladora industry of high technology, such as ¶
electronics, biotechnology, etc., to displace the low-tech
maquiladora industry, will allow Central American ¶
countries to achieve higher levels of competitiveness and
quality to increase participation in market shares under ¶
processes of economic globalization. The challenge is to
formulate and implement an industrial policy combining ¶
different industrial schemes of local, regional and global
supply chains with non-traditional exports and maquila. ¶
Government policies should be focused to achieve labor
stability, decent jobs, democratic governance for the ¶
estimated 500, 000 workers seeking better living conditions
and to live with dignity. The implementation of ¶ training
programs and job training will help strengthen the
competitiveness and productivity, as well as to ¶ improve
the living conditions of the workforce. The trend is towards
an increase in the maquiladora industries in ¶ Central America
countries, which would bring increases in rates of
employment and exports, but the challenge is ¶ to ensure that
these increases also enhance economic development and
social welfare for the region.
Better Working Conditions Increases Profitability
KAUFMANN 2009 ( Sustainable Success¶ For companies
operating in developing countries, it pays to commit to
improving social and environmental conditions, Sustainable
Success¶ For companies operating in developing countries, it
pays to commit to improving social and environmental
conditions, June 22, 2009¶ GLOBAL BUSINESS, Wall Street
Journal) D.R
Companies that excel in providing health insurance,
retirement benefits and professional development for their
employees also show above-average profitability. The most
successful companies not only enforce safety standards
strictly but also improve them over time. And they support
local communities with initiatives in education, health care,
environmental protection and agricultural development.¶
Finally, the most successful companies set high social and
environmental standards in the selection of their suppliers,
monitor the suppliers to ensure compliance, and work with
them to continually improve their performance in these
areas.¶ How exactly do such efforts affect profits? We found
that sustainable management yields six major competitive
advantages:¶ A STERLING REPUTATION: A growing number of
consumers consider competing companies’ social and
environmental records when deciding which products to
buy. A reputation for concern about these issues sets a
company apart from its competitors. Consider the popularity
of fair-trade groceries, whose distributors promise to
promote the welfare of the providers and the environment.¶
It’s important to remember that a company’s reputation in
this regard depends not only on its own actions but also to a
large degree on those of its suppliers.¶ BETTER EMPLOYEES:
In emerging countries, where living conditions are most in
need of improvement, employees are especially proud of
working for companies that are recognized as leaders in
sustainability. That gives these companies a big advantage in
all three areas of human-resources management: hiring,
retaining and motivating the most talented workers.
Maquilas Key
Maquiladora’s key player in Mexican ExportsStromberg 2002 (“The Mexican Maquila Industry and the
Environment; An Overview of the Issues” Per Stromberg 2002)
D.R
The Mexico-United States border region comprises one of
the most dynamic and complex industrial areas in the world.
The region is characterized by high population growth and
increasing urbanization and industrialization, all of which is
taking place in a context of rapid political and economic
change (Rincón, 2000). The Mexico-located maquila in-bond
industry is a key player in this development. In the 1993-98
period, the maquilas accounted for 41.5% of the average
Mexican export value (Dussel, 2000), and in the 1994-2000
period its share of foreign direct investment grew from 6% to
21.4%.
Decline of Maquiladoras performance has hurt the
U.S economy, reforms needed.
GAO 2003 (“Mexico's Maquiladora Decline Affects U.S.Mexico Border Communities and Trade; Recovery Depends in
Part on Mexico's Actions” GAO-03-891, Jul 25, 2003, U.S
governmental Accountability Office) D.R
Mexico's maquiladoras have evolved into the largest
component of U.S.-Mexico trade. Maquiladoras import raw
materials and components for processing or assembly by
Mexican labor and reexport the resulting products, primarily
to the United States. Most maquiladoras are U.S. owned, and
maquiladoras import most of their components from U.S.
suppliers. Maquiladoras have also been an engine of growth
for the U.S.-Mexico border. However, the recent decline of
maquiladora operations has raised concerns about the
impact on U.S. suppliers and on the economy of border
communities. Because of these concerns, GAO was asked to
analyze (1) changes in maquiladora employment and
production, (2) factors related to the maquiladoras' decline,
and (3) implications of recent developments for
maquiladoras' viability.¶ After growing rapidly during the
1990s, Mexican maquiladoras experienced a sharp decline
after October 2000. By early 2002, employment in the
maquiladora sector had contracted by 21 percent and
production had contracted by about 30 percent. The decline
was particularly severe for certain industries, such as
electronics, and certain Mexican cities, such as Tijuana. The
downturn was felt on the U.S. side of the border as well, as
U.S. exports through U.S.-Mexico land border ports fell and
U.S. employment in manufacturing and certain other trade
related sectors declined. The cyclical downturn in the U.S.
economy has been a principal factor in the decrease in
maquiladora production and employment since 2000 . Other
factors include increased global competition, particularly from
China, Central America, and the Caribbean; appreciation of
the peso; changes in Mexico's tax regime for maquiladoras;
and the loss of certain tariff benefits as a result of the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Maquiladoras face a
challenging business environment, and recent difficulties
have raised questions about their future viability.
Maquiladoras involved in modern, complex manufacturing
appear poised to meet the industry's challenges. Still, experts
agree that additional fundamental reforms by Mexico are
necessary to restore maquiladoras' competitiveness. U.S.
trade and homeland security policies present further
challenges for maquiladoras.
Cross Border Trade with Mexico good for U.S
economy
Keeler 12 ($500 billion a year: Realizing the full value of
cross-border trade with Mexico, Sharon Keeler, Arizona State
University) D.R
“Mexico has an economy the size of Russia and more
economic potential than China,” said ASU President Michael
Crow. “Yet we have decided to pretend we don’t have a G20
neighbor. Mexico is a powerful economic ally, yet we are
purposefully ignorant and we must defeat that.Ӧ The
economic value of the U.S.-Mexico partnership for many in
the U.S. remains “hidden in plain sight.”¶ For example:¶ • U.S.
sales to Mexico are larger that all U.S. exports to China,
India, Russia and Brazil, combined, as well as all combined
sales to Great Britain, France, Belgium and the
Netherlands .¶ • Mexico is the second-largest export market
for the U.S. (Canada is first), and the U.S. is the largest global
export market for Mexican exports.¶ • Approximately 6
million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico.¶ • Mexico’s
$349 billion in 2011 exports to the world, on average,
contained 37 percent U.S. inputs.¶ • For every dollar Mexico
makes from exporting to the U.S., it will in turn spend 50
cents on U.S. products and services.¶ • Twenty-two U.S.
states count Mexico as their No. 1 or No. 2 export market –
states as close to the border as Arizona, California and Texas
and as far away as from the border as New Hampshire,
Michigan and Ohio.¶ • Closer to home, the economic impact
on Arizona is huge. $11.9 billion in revenue and 111,216 jobs
in Arizona rely on trade with Mexico. In addition, Mexican
tourists comprise 70 percent of international overnight
visitors.¶ Michael Camuñez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of
Commerce, said that as a competitive region the United
States, Mexico and Canada are competing against the rest of
the world. The countries need to leverage their power,
advantage and close proximity.
Mexico is linked to U.S trade
Villarreal, U.S Mexican Relations 2012 (U.S.-Mexico
Economic Relations:
Trends, Issues, and Implications, M. Angeles Villarreal,
Specialist in International Trade and Finance,
August 9, 2012,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32934.pdf) D.R¶ Mexico’s
export-oriented assembly plants are closely linked to U.S.Mexico trade in various ¶ labor-intensive industries such as
auto parts and electronic goods. These plants generate a
large ¶ amount of trade with the United States, and a
majority of the plants have U.S. parent companies. ¶ Foreignowned assembly plants, which originated under Mexico’s
maquiladora program in the ¶ 1960s,11 account for a
substantial share of Mexico’s trade with the United States.
The border ¶ region with the United States has the highest
concentration of assembly plants and workers. Prior to
NAFTA, a maquiladora was limited to selling up to 50% of the
previous year’s export ¶ production to the domestic market.
Most maquiladoras currently export the majority of their ¶
production to the U.S. market.
Offcase
T
FDI in manufacturing is economic engagement
Carol C. Adelman et al June 28, 2005 Dr. P.H., Director,
Center for Science in Public Policy Jeremiah Norris, Senior
Fellow Jean Weicher, Research Associate from the Hudson
Institute for data and research. ‘America’s Total Economic
Engagement with the Developing World:
Rethinking the Uses and Nature of Foreign Aid’
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/DigitalLibrary/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0c54e3b3-1e9c-be1e2c24-a6a8c7060233&lng=en&id=19754
This number includes foreign direct investment and net
capital markets in developing and emerging economies, and
is an important measure of U.S. total economic engagement
with developing nations.10 This category is most indicative of
the U.S. contribution to long-lasting economic growth and
prosperity in these countries. The number includes direct
investment by American companies in agriculture,
manufacturing and service industries that creates jobs and
income for poor people. It represents the involvement of
U.S. companies and institutions in foreign capital markets as
well, investment that helps develop permanent economic
and social infrastructure in the developing world.
Foreign direct investment is economic engagement
Department of State 2009 http://20012009.state.gov/e/eeb/92986.htm
¶ Total economic engagement is putting all of the players to
the same plow.¶ ¶ EEB is harnessing trade and economic policy
formation, proper governance, and ODA activities together.
The bureau also integrates the American individual. Working
with U.S. citizen-partners participating in developing
economies abroad is a key element of total economic
engagement . An accurate accounting of a nation’s total
engagement must include economic policies as well as,
trade, remittances, and foreign direct investment. In these
areas, the U.S. leads the world in total economic engagement
with the developing world. The private donations of American
citizens, military emergency aid and peacekeeping and
government assistance provide the primary sources for
development financing.¶ ¶ In all of EEB’s endeavors with State
regional bureaus, the White House, and other economic
agencies (e.g., USTR, Treasury), we promote Total Economic
Engagement as the standard for assessing our country and
regional economic strategies because we have seen that this
holistic economic strategy delivers tangible results.
Plan Popular/Say Yes
Companies say yes, it benefits their economy, and
the are more easily exposed to human rights
violations
Weissbrodt et. Al ‘3 [David Weissbrodt and Muria Kruger;
Professor David S. Weissbrodt is a distinguished and widely
published scholar of international human rights law. He
teaches international human rights law, administrative law,
immigration law, and torts. October 2003,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3133689.pdf “Norms on
the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other
Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”, KP]
Many companies have acknowledged their human rights
obligations and the need to restore ¶ confidence in
corporate social responsibility. The Norms provide
companies that want to be ¶ socially responsible with an easily
understood and comprehensive summary of their obligations
¶ under such systems as human rights law, humanitarian law,
international labor law, environ- ¶ mental law, consumer law,
and anticorruption law. Accordingly, the Norms help to
establish ¶ a level playing field for competition. Clarifying their
duties may actually benefit businesses, as ¶ a growing body
of evidence is demonstrating that compliance with human
rights standards enhances a company's bottom line.
Consumers are often willing to take the human rights con- ¶
duct of a business into account in making their purchasing
decisions. Nowadays, businesses ¶ are also more likely to be
exposed to liability for conduct that violates human rights
standards. Clarification would help businesses to determine
whether they should pursue a proposed course of conduct
that might expose them to liability, consumer backlash,
investor flight, and/or loss of the best and brightest
employees. Some companies have already expressed support
for the Norms and agreed to apply them in their own
operations as a way of affirming their commitment to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.¶
Basically everyone likes the plan
Hillemans ‘03[Carolin F. Hillemanns; German lawyer with
solid management experience of an international nongovernmental organisation, and strong background in general
public international law and corporate social responsibility,
8/26/03, “UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational
Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to
Human
Rights”http://www.germanlawjournal.com/pdfs/Vol04No10/
PDF_Vol_04_No_10_1065-1080_European_Hillemanns.pdf ,
KP]
The Norms have been mostly welcomed by all interested
parties, since they clarify ¶ the expectations and
responsibilities of all companies regarding human rights and
¶ shed light on the contested and confusing field of corporate
social responsibility.20¶ In so doing, however, the Norms
overturn two paradigms that have to date dominated the
discourse on corporate social responsibility: namely that all
initiatives ¶ should be voluntary and that there is no ‘one size
fits all’ model to cope with the ¶ different situations facing
businesses, for example, in the extractive sector and the ¶
apparel industry. The International Organization of Employers,
the International ¶ Chamber of Commerce and some other
business representatives have criticized the ¶ Norms for these
shifts in policy. They assert the traditional view in
international ¶ law that the promotion and protection of
human rights is a task and obligation ¶ reserved for national
governments.21
There is Support for cross-border trade
Villarreal, U.S Mexican Relations 2012 (U.S.-Mexico
Economic Relations:
Trends, Issues, and Implications, M. Angeles Villarreal,
Specialist in International Trade and Finance, ¶ August 9, 2012,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32934.pdf) D.R¶
In the remainder of the 112th Congress, policymakers will
likely maintain an active interest in ¶ Mexico on issues
related to cross-border trade, Mexico’s participation in the
Trans-Pacific ¶ Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations,
economic conditions in Mexico, migration, and border ¶ issues.
Congress also will likely take an interest in the economic
policies of Mexican Presidentelect fEnrique Peña Nieto, who
is expected to enter into office for a six-year term on
December 1, ¶ 2012. During his campaign, Peña Nieto
advocated a 10-point economic plan that includes, among ¶
other measures, implementing recently passed legislation to
counter monopolistic practices, ¶ passing fiscal reform,
opening up the oil sector to private investment, making
farmers more ¶ productive, and doubling infrastructure
investments.
Bipartisan support for assisting Mexico with human
rights which are central to relations
Julian Pecquet 04/26/13 The Hill-writer ‘Lawmakers:
Obama administration should press Mexico on human rights’
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/americas/296467lawmakers-obama-administration-should-press-mexico-onhuman-rights
The Obama administration should make progress on human
rights a “central part” of U.S.-Mexican relations, a bipartisan
group of 24 lawmakers said Friday ahead of President
Obama's trip next week.¶ The letter to Secretary of State John Kerry,
spearheaded by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), comes as President Enrique Peña
Nieto has vowed to ensure that “rights established on paper
become reality.” The State Department is withholding $18
million in security assistance pending progress on human
rights, and the lawmakers urged Kerry to keep the cuts in
place until the country shows an increase in the number of
official abuse allegations that are prosecuted.¶ “Now is an
opportune moment to work with the Mexican government
to improve the situation in that country,” wrote the
lawmakers. “We are encouraged by President Enrique Peña
Nieto’s strong statements affirming his commitment to
human rights and we believe they provide the United States
with an important opening to raise our concerns with the
Mexican government. We believe that a measurable
increase in the number of cases of abuses that are
investigated and prosecuted in civilian jurisdiction should be
a key benchmark by which the State Department assesses
the progress made by the Peña Nieto government on human
rights.”¶ The letter goes on to decry:¶ The failure to reform Mexico’s Military Code
of Justice to ensure human rights abuses by the military against civilians are tried in
civilian court;¶ A 400 percent increase in reports of torture by the Mexican security
forces to obtain confessions;¶ The failure to implement protection measures
mandated under the Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and
Journalists; and¶ More than 26,000 disappearances – including more than 2,000
involving federal authorities.¶ The letter is signed by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas), Tim
Bishop (D-N.Y.), Sam Farr (D-Calif.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.),
Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), John Carter (R-
Texas), Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), John Lewis (D-Ga.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Maxine
Waters (D-Calif.), Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), Raul Grijalva
(D-Ariz.), Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Bill Foster (D-Ill.), Rosa
DeLauro (D-Conn.), Ed Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) and Danny
Davis (D-Ill.).¶
Obama and Nieto are committed to human rights
Ruth Isabel Robles 4/25/13
Just a week before President Obama’s first visit to Mexico
since President Peña Nieto assumed office, 24 Members of
Congress sent a letter on April 23rd to newly appointed
Secretary of State John Kerry with a clear request -- “make
the defense of human rights a central part of the bilateral
agenda with our neighbor.” ¶ This letter, co-sponsored by
Representative Moran (D-VA) and Representative Poe (R-TX),
reflects bi-partisan concern about “the persistence of grave
human rights violations in Mexico.” President Pena Nieto has
expressed his commitment to human rights since assuming
office on December 1, 2012, noting that one of Mexico’s
greatest challenges is to make sure that “rights established
on paper become reality.” These representatives underscore
the scope and severity of challenges that lay ahead, noting “a
five-fold increase in complaints—from 534 in 2007 to
2,723 in 2012—of human rights violations by Mexican soldiers
and federal police, including torture, rape, extrajudicial
executions, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, as
well as other abuses.Ӧ