Ruth Bergan, director of the Trade Justice Movement, a coalition of civil society organisations, writes in the Times Red Box about the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal that the UK signed last week. The deal includes 11 countries including Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Chile and Peru, but the economic benefits to the UK are „negligible“, Bergan writes. And yet the government’s assessment predicts that greenhouse gas emissions „will increase [by 0.025 %] as a result of joining the deal“. She adds: „Not only has the government said nothing about how it plans to mitigate this outcome, but it appears to have capitulated to Malaysia’s demand to reduce tariffs on palm oil to zero, which could increase deforestation, undermine community land rights and threaten the habitats of species such as orangutans.“

Elsewhere in the Financial Times, Nina Jensen – a marine biologist and CEO of the non-profit REV Ocean – calls on Norway to join a „global moratorium“ on seabed mining. She writes: „Seabed minerals will come too late to play a crucial role in the ecological transition. Mining in Norway is not expected to start until 2035 at the earliest, if at all. By then, the need for minerals is expected to be balanced by new technologies and increased recycling.“

Ruth Bergan, The Times Red Box