“Free trade” has substituted the freedom of the planet and its diverse species to evolve and nourish, with freedom for corporations to destroy the planet and the living economies that sustain people. The ecological and social destabilisation of the world in the last two decades is a result of the deregulation of commerce through the “free trade” agreements of the World Trade Organization, engineered and written by corporations for the benefit of corporations.
We commit ourselves to resisting the attempts to push new “free trade” agreements based on corporate rights and corporate personhood, which dismantle human rights and our democracies and constitutions. We do not recognise corporations as persons. They are legal entities that society gives permission to exist within the limits of social, ecological and ethical responsibility; corporations having responsibility for climate change are subject to the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
—- from “A New pact with the planet”, Vandana Shiva, from resurgence magazine, March/April 2016
