UN Adviser Doubts Potential US-UK Trade Deal to Benefit Environment

A potential free trade deal between Washington and London is unlikely to avoid threatening the environment, UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Jeffrey Sachs told Sputnik on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said after his meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that a UK-US trade deal would be a priority for the United States amid Brexit.

"I'm not really familiar with the details of the [US] negotiations with the UK. The main problem has been that deals in recent years have not put enough attention to environmental issues, so most of the environmental community has not been very happy with TPP and TTIP. Because the negotiators didn't really know too much about the environmental side and they didn't want to get into details. I would be surprised if the new negotiations are doing anything different from this," Sachs said on the sidelines of the Gaidar Forum in Moscow.

He also urged free trade negotiators to carry out a more fundamental reorientation of the trade strategy to make sure that it abides by the Paris climate agreement and other environmental deals.

Both the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been repeatedly criticized by rights groups and watchdogs for their potential impact on the environment.

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