Commission for Environmental Cooperation

Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin has been working in the natural resources sector for over 10 years. After attaining a post-secondary degree in political science, Anne-Raphaëlle focused on studying law, more specifically environmental law, earning a civil law degree and a common law degree from the University of Ottawa. After completing her Master’s degree in environmental and natural resources management at Dalhousie University, she worked for several years as an environmental and social impacts management specialist for Hatch, Ltd., an international engineering consulting firm. In her current role as President of WaterPower Canada—voice of the hydropower sector in Canada—she promotes the many attributes of water power and the fundamental role it plays in the fight against climate change. Anne speaks French, English and Spanish and is certified in project planning and controls. She is also a co-founder of the Canadian Council on Renewable Electricity (CanCORE).

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Louie Porta is the Executive Director of Oceans North. With extensive experience living in, working in and exploring Arctic Canada, he oversees projects related to marine conservation, oil and gas, Arctic shipping, indigenous protected areas, coastal stewardship, and plastics. He formerly served as lead political adviser to Mary Simon during her appointment as Minister’s Special Representative for Arctic Leadership. He was appointed to serve on Canada’s National Advisory Panel—charged with recommending how Canada can meet its international conservation obligations.

Louie is also an adviser to the Students on Ice Foundation, is a senior associate for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, serves on the governing council of the Ocean Tracking Network and sits on the research oversight committee for Genome Canada’s investigation into oil spill countermeasures for the Arctic. He has a master’s degree from Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his wife and three children.

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Professor Elizabeth Whitsitt has been engaged in a variety of issues in the area of international law, particularly international economic law. Her research interests include the unifying role of adjudication in global economic governance, and the relationship between international economic law and the regulation of natural resources, energy, environment and human rights.

Professor Whitsitt teaches various courses in international law and dispute resolution at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law. Professor Whitsitt received her LLM in international legal studies from New York University and completed her PhD in 2017. Her PhD research focused on the intersection of trade law and investment arbitration. More specifically, her work considered the role that adjudicators play in the continuing conversation about the relationship between the international trade and international investment law regimes and the extent to which these regimes are uniting through the process of adjudication. Professor Whitsitt has published and presented extensively in the areas of international trade and investment law. She is also the recipient of a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, a Killam Memorial Scholarship and the Marc Lalonde Prize for Excellence in International and Commercial Arbitration.

Professor Whitsitt is a member of the Law Society of Alberta, the Canadian Council on International Law (CCIL), the American Society of International Law (ASIL), and the European Society of International Law (ESIL).

Professor Whitsitt is also an appointee to Canada’s roster for NAFTA Chapter 19 Binational Panels.

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An agricultural engineer specializing in forests and a graduate of the Chapingo Autonoma University, Luis Alfonso Argüelles Suárez is currently Mexico’s representative on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a position he has occupied since 2014. From 1995 to 1997, he sat on the FSC’s Board of Directors.

Between 1981 and 1986, he worked at the then National Forestry Research Institute, now known as the National Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research Institute (Inifap). After serving as a researcher commissioned by a pilot Quintana Roo forestry project as the Mexican counterpart of a Mexico-Germany cooperation agreement, he served as forestry advisor on a forestry management project in Quintana Roo under the aegis of a Mexico-UK cooperation agreement. For ten years, he was Technical Director of the Quintana Roo Association of Ejido Forestry Producers. He has also been an advisor to the National Union of Community Forestry Organizations (Unofoc), a consultant with the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) on a forestry policy project in Ecuador and a consultant with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru. Argüelles Suárez is a founding member of Trópica Rural Latinoamericana, an organization which has executed projects for the MacArthur Foundation, the WWF and Corredor Mesoamericano-México.

An agricultural engineer with an MA and PhD in tropical agroecosystems from the College of Postgraduates, Esteban Escamilla Prado’s doctoral dissertation concerned the study of organic coffee quality in Mexico. Since 1987, he has been a research professor at the Eastern University Regional Center (CRUO) of the Autonomous University of Chapingo (UACh), in Huatusco, Veracruz. Formerly the director of CRUO, he is currently research director at the National Center for Coffee Research, Innovation and Technological Development (Cenacafé). Aside from his research and teaching responsibilities, he dedicates part of his time to training and outreach work, teaching courses and offering certificate programs on comprehensive sustainable coffee cultivation, organic agriculture, biodiversity, sustainable land use, and agroforestry. Having ample experience in coffee cultivation, his research includes a range of topics: plant genetic resources, genetic improvement, coffee growing systems and technologies, economic diversification, edible insects, and worm farming. He has directed and advised numerous undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations. He has also published numerous books, articles and manuals, as well as presented many papers in local, national and international events.

Throughout his professional career, Escamilla Prado has participated in diverse activities related to comprehensive sustainable coffee cultivation in Mexico and various coffee-producing countries in Central and South America, with a focus on training and advising small scale and Indigenous producer cooperatives on organic production, fair trade and quality control. As an organic coffee producer himself, he is a founding member of the “Catuai Amarillo” cooperative and the Federation of High Mountains Specialty Coffees (Incafesam), social enterprises that export organic coffee to the United States and Europe. Moreover, he is a member and current president of the Steering Committee of the Mexican Certification Authority for Ecological Products and Processes (Certimex). He is a former mayor of Chocamán, Veracruz, his place of residence. Since 2019, he has collaborated with the Sowing Life program of the Mexican government’s Ministry of Welfare as an agroforestry and sustainable coffee cultivation expert.

Economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with a PhD in planning and development from the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies, Pedro Moctezuma Barragán is a prominent national and international activist on the issues of water, the environment and community participation. He is currently coordinator of the Sustainability Research Program at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) where he also sits on the Board of Directors. He is a member of the National Coordination Council of Agua para Tod@s, Agua para la Vida (“Water for all, Water for Life”) and a participant in the Society, Environment and Institutions (SUSMAI) graduate seminar at UNAM.

Founder and Director of the lncalli lxcahuicopa Center for Sustainability (Centli), which also includes agro-ecological and forestry centers, both located in Tlalmanalco, Mexico State, and co-founder of the Amecameca and La Compañía River Basins Commission, Moctezuma Barragán also has experience in implementing community development processes and in projects on the design and self-managed construction of social housing. He has overseen planning in areas such as ecological land-use planning, water resources and micro watersheds management, municipal development and comprehensive solid waste management.

His experience in teaching spans four decades. Founder of the Department of Socioeconomic Research at the Torreón School of Economics, in Coahuila, he has given over 140 courses in various academic institutions and advised a large number of professional and postgraduate dissertations. In addition, he has been a member of various academic commissions, organized courses and workshops, participated in the reviewing of undergraduate and MA curricula, and presented over two hundred papers and conferences in dozens of universities in Mexico, as well as in Europe, Canada, the United States and Latin America. The author of over 60 publications, he has also sat on multiple editorial boards.

Felicia Marcus was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown as a board member of the State Water Resources Control Board (Board), and was sworn in on July 2, 2012. Before her appointment to the Water Board, she was the Western Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national environmental leader in bringing science, law, and policy expertise to solving our world’s pressing environmental and conservation challenges. Prior to joining NRDC, Ms. Marcus was the Executive VP/COO of the Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit devoted to conserving land for people.

During the Clinton Administration, she had been administrator of USEPA Region IX, where she was known for her work in bringing unlikely allies together for environmental progress and for making the agency more responsive to the communities it serves, particularly Indian Tribes, communities of color, local government, and business. While at EPA, Ms. Marcus worked extensively on the range of environmental issues under EPA’s jurisdiction, most heavily in air quality, Bay-Delta water, tribal, and US-Mexico border issues. Prior to that, Ms. Marcus headed Los Angeles’ Department of Public Works at a time when the City went from garnering lawsuits to garnering national awards for environmental excellence. Ms. Marcus came to Public Works after extensive experience as a public interest lawyer and community organizer in Los Angeles.

She currently serves on many non-profit boards and advisory councils, including the Public Policy Institute of California, Urban Habitat, Kesten Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy, and the Center for Diversity and the Environment. She is also an Obama Administration appointee to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation—Joint Public Advisory Council (US, Mexico, Canada) and was a Schwarzennegar Administration appointee to the Delta Stewardship Council prior to her appointment to that board.

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Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Ph.D., is founding chair and professor of the department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University (NAU), where she also teaches courses on tribal nation building.

Throughout her professional career, Professor Trujillo has been involved with education, health, social services, and cultural enhancement programs in conjunction with communities, tribal government entities, and higher education institutions.

She is the principal investigator (for community outreach) at the National Cancer Institute-funded Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention, which focuses on alleviating the burden of cancer among Native Americans of the southwestern United States through research, training and outreach programs that allow the Partnership to collaborate closely with the Hopi, Navajo, and Tohono O’odham communities it serves.

Professor Trujillo is also the NAU research, education and training co-director of the Center for American Indian Resilience (CAIR), a partnership with University of Arizona’s College of Public Health to reduce American Indian health disparities.

In 2011, Professor Trujillo served as a visiting fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Previously, she was director of the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University, and was formerly a member of the Tribal Council of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona.

Professor Trujillo received B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University.

She has served on a number of local, national and international boards. These include the Global Diversity Foundation, which promotes agricultural, biological and cultural diversity around the world through research, training and social action. Professor Trujillo is also a member of the US Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which advises the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who serves as the US representative on the governing Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).

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Considered one of the nation’s most experienced and respected environmental leaders, Robert Varney is a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) New England Regional Administrator, who currently is President of Normandeau Associates, a science-based environmental firm with eighteen offices in 12 states. He was the longest-serving regional administrator and top environmental official in New England and is credited with instituting many innovative approaches and policy initiatives that have served as national models. Prior to EPA, Mr. Varney was one of the nation’s longest-serving state environmental commissioners, appointed by three Governors of both political parties.

Bob is nationally recognized for his efforts on global climate change; energy efficiency and renewables; homeland security and preparedness; clean air, clean water and safe drinking water; superfund and brownfields cleanup and redevelopment; environmental justice and healthy communities; restoration of rivers, lakes and coastal areas; strong and consistent enforcement and compliance assistance; strengthening partnerships; and improved agency management and performance.

Mr. Varney has chaired the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), State/EPA Superfund Policy Forum, Federal Ozone Transport Commission (OTC), Governmental Advisory Committee to the US Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission and New England Governors Conference Environment Committee. He also was a member of EPA’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council and currently serves on the NH Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the CEC Joint Public Advisory Committee (US, Mexico, Canada). Bob is the recipient of numerous environmental awards such as the EPA Lifetime Achievement Award, NE Water Works Association’s John H. Chafee Award, Environmental Business Council of NE’s Paul Keough Award and the ECOS Founder’s Award.

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