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Environmental News from the IRC
Forging local-global links for policy alternatives, strategic dialogue, and citizen action since 1979.
http://www.americaspolicy.org/
<http://www.americaspolicy.org/> December 17, 2004
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New from the IRC:
10 Years of NAFTA's Commission on Environmental Cooperation in Mexico
Edited by: Laura Carlsen and Talli Nauman
To assure passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the U.S. Congress, the three
countries forged a separate agreement, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation.
This agreement created the trilateral Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC is led by
a council made up of Canada’s Minister of Environment, Mexico’s Secretary of the Environment and the
Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. As the CEC celebrates its tenth
anniversary this year, critics and boosters examine its unique role in analyzing and directing the
relationship between trade and environment.
The IRC Americas Program has published many articles over the past few years assessing the work of the
Environmental Commission and exploring the impact of trade on aspects of the environment. The
Commission has sparked controversy since its inception. Supporters state that NAFTA’s side agreement on
the environment and the formation of the CEC have been critical tools in dealing with specific
environmental problems resulting from economic integration. Detractors say that the CEC has been a
mostly ineffective body that has served to legitimize the negative environmental effects of NAFTA’s trade
and investment clauses.
In the interests of opening up a strategic dialogue and thinking about the nexus between trade and
environment, we offer four summaries of recent essays and reports, followed by points for discussion. The
first, by Mexican environmentalist and former member of the CEC's Public Advisory Committee Laura
Silván, offers a generally positive view of the Commission in an essay entitled "Resolving Environmental
Problems and Fostering Citizen Participation." Marisa Jacott of Greenpeace/Mexico counters with a more
critical perspective on the Commission's work that concludes that subordination to the trade agreement
and the lack of binding powers render the CEC ineffective in carrying out its mandate. We also provide a
summary of the ten-year evaluation commissioned by the CEC and finish with a list of alternative
proposals for incorporating the environment into economic integration processes.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Program (online at http://www.americaspolicy.org) of
the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and Talli
Nauman is the IRC’s editor at large and Americas Program associate.
See full article online at:
http://www.irc-online.org/content/dialogue/2004/01.php
<http://www.irc-online.org/content/dialogue/2004/01.php>
With printer-friendly PDF version at:
http://www.irc-online.org/content/pdf/01.cec.pdf
<http://www.irc-online.org/content/pdf/01.cec.pdf>
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Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
Siri D. Khalsa
Outreach Coordinator
Email: [email protected]