Taking into account of the environment in free-trade agreement impact assessments[Prise en compte de l'environnement dans l'évaluation des impacts des traités de libre-échange]

Several large treaties are being negotiated or ratified today: between the European Union and the United States or Canada, the Trade in service agreement, three projects between EU and Africa, or the Transpacific agreement. We evaluate the methods of the many socio-economic impact studies of these treaties. Most of them take into account only the direct costs for the companies and not the external costs, social or environmental, which are much higher. The environmental impacts are taken into account only through sustainability impact assessments, whose input data are results of socio-economic impact studies. These impact assessments, in their most serious part, translate the economic impact assessments into impacts on pollutant emissions, consumption of raw materials or waste generation through inventory methods. But an inventory is only the first phase of an impact assessment. These studies try also to assess the impacts on other environment and sustainability aspects, as biodiversity, culture, inequalities, etc. but with a biased strictly economic rationality, without drawing on the variety of disciplines necessary for such exercises.