Cartagena Protocol Essay

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The Cartagena Protocol was founded on the basis of Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration which states; “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (Rio Declaration) The Cartagena Protocol was monumental because it was the first international agreement to acknowledge that GMO crops could likely pose threats to a countries’ biodiversity and the health of their citizens, and it set forth measures for regulating GMOs. If an importing country has questions about the …show more content…

These policies almost led to a small civil war within Mexico the day NAFTA was implanted. A group of indigenous nationals called “Zapatistas” were enraged that Mexico had ratified NAFTA and demanded that it be repealed under the threat that Mexico’s minority and poor would be mitigated to second class citizens their rights undermined. These specific issue at hand was that they claimed NAFTA violated Mexico’s constitution and no such agreement could be ratified if it was illegal. In response to the issue with the constitution, Mexico had to alter it so that NAFTA fell between bounds. In particular, Article 27 which was fought over in the Mexican Revolutionary War. It stated that certain lands within the state of Chiapas, where the Zapatista movement started, and around Mexico were safe from the future sale to corporations, or exploitation of the natural resources. It was in essence a protection for the indigenous people who lived in these lands. NAFTA infringed on these rights because it needed to allow foreign companies entrance to these lands, so in favor of neo-liberal ideas, President Salinas amended the Mexican constitution to allow the state to sell these property right to corporations. This incited a rebellion from these people in 1994 leading to instability within the country, and one of the culminating reasons that led to the Mexican Peso Crisis of

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