Free trade can help protect our environment

The Obama administration has completed negotiations over a landmark agreement with 11 other nations: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major deal that demonstrates how trade policy can deliver not only economic benefits but also provide incentives to protect endangered wildlife, conserve tropical forests and restore ocean fisheries.

As secretaries of the Interior under Presidents Clinton and Obama, we have worked to protect the environment while addressing climate change. Again and again, we have come to learn that conservation efforts can’t stop at the water’s edge. To protect biodiversity and build a sustainable economy, we must reach out beyond our borders to spread American values in the global economy.

Five of the TPP nations are among the 17 megadiverse countries that contain more than 70% of the globe’s plant and animal species. Through this trade deal, partner nations are committing to enforce their environmental laws and fulfill their obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

For example, the U.S. and TPP nations are taking active measures to protect elephants through the deal’s new restrictions on the import, export and commercial use of ivory. Many nations have been unable to implement or enforce strong environmental protections, so the TPP adds teeth by imposing sanctions as an enforcement mechanism. This deal also includes strong protections that will prevent bribery and corruption — two of the root causes of failed forest governance and illegal logging — while encouraging greater stability and transparency in oversight.

TPP nations also account for a quarter of marine catch and seafood exports. This deal offers a historic opportunity to promote sustainability for ocean life by eliminating subsidies that lead to illegal overfishing practices that decimate the ecosystem. In addition, the TPP requires members to meet their obligations under an international agreement to prevent marine pollution.

Along with land and ocean conservation measures, the TPP will protect the ozone layer by controlling trade in ozone-depleting substances and help our fight to slow climate change by promoting green investment and exports. It’s important to encourage renewable energy and sustainability in developing countries, so this deal eliminates tariffs on environmentally beneficial products and technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines, waste water treatment systems and air pollution equipment. The TPP rewards American firms that export clean energy ingenuity, creating good jobs at home while shaping a renewable energy future abroad.

The TPP, the greenest trade deal ever, has placed the environment on equal footing with our economic agenda.