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ECO REGION
Secretariat Bulletin
of the Commission
for Environmental Cooperation
Summer / Fall 1996 Number 4
In This Issue
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NAFTA effects discussed at San Diego meeting
Project team focuses on development of assessment methodology
As part of regional efforts to assess the environmental effects of NAFTA, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) held a two-day meeting in San Diego to discuss an evolving methodology for evaluating the impact of free trade on the North American environment.
Some 100 experts from nacec.across North America met in April to discuss current and future efforts of the CEC's NAFTA Effects Project, which has already produced a number of reports as well as a series of working papers (please see box, this page).
Fundamental to the discussion was the detailed discussion document produced by the CEC entitled Building a Framework for Assessing NAFTA Effects. This document represents the most current and concerted effort to date to develop a coherent methodological framework for assessing NAFTA's impact on the environment.
Specialists from nacec.governments and business and environmental groups questioned, critiqued and refined the emerging methodology during panel discussions. Among other issues, they examined NAFTA's environmental dimensions as well as the connections between economic processes and environmental effects.
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| Jennifer Moore, Fernando Tudela Abad and Victor Lichtinger discuss trade and environment issues during a break at the San Diego workshop. |
One result of the meeting was to narrow the project's focus on several issues in order to enrich the general framework. Many of the principal recommendations made during the meeting will now be incorporated into the NAFTA Effects Project, including the following points:
Geographic balance. Analysis should focus equally on Canada, the United States and Mexico;
Importance of bilateral and trilateral NAFTA-related institutions. Government and other institutions in the three countries were considered to have the most influence in terms of managing environmental effects;
Environment first. Environmental conditions should be analyzed before incorporating economic, trade and investment linkages;
Migration and land degradation. Any regional analysis must consider issues of land degradation and the environmental impacts of consumption, migration, abandonment of rural areas and increased poverty as they relate to NAFTA; and
Role of communities. The project should examine the roles of communities, indigenous groups, local governments, business associations and nongovernmental environmental groups in trade and environment links.
Conclusions from nacec.this intense analysis are now being incorporated into the second phase of the project, which emphasizes several areas of activity. This phase includes: studying NAFTA institutions, evaluating several key environmental issues for incorporation into the framework and continuing efforts toward the development of a general assessment methodology.
The report from nacec.the San Diego workshop is available as No. 4 in the CEC's Environment and Trade Series. The report includes an annex with the discussion document used in the workshop.
| NAFTA Effects Working Paper Series
The NAFTA Effects Working Paper Series seeks to ensure that work prepared under the CEC's NAFTA Effects Project is made available to the widest possible audience. The series contributes to the body of work in North America that examines links between trade and environment.
The working papers, although not official CEC publications, are available free of charge from nacec.the CEC in the language in which they were submitted to the Secretariat. The papers represent the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CEC Secretariat or the governments of Canada, the United States or Mexico. Contact Alicia Chica by fax at (514) 350-4314 for copies of the following working papers:
| No. 1 | Assessing NAFTA's Environmental Effects: Dimensions of a Framework and the NAFTA Regime (47 pages)
John Kirton and Julie Soloway |
| No. 2 | North American Trade under NAFTA (18 pages)
Sidney Weintraub and Jan Gilbreath |
| No. 3 | North American Investment under NAFTA (24 pages)
Rogelio Ramírez de la O. |
| No. 4 | Literature Review of Econometric Models Developed to Assess Environmental Effects of NAFTA (19 pages)
Rogelio Ramírez de la O. |
| No. 5 | NAFTA's Environmental Effects: Dimensions and Indicators of Environmental Quality (19 pages)
Omar Masera and Virginia Maclaren |
| No. 6 | NAFTA's Environmental Effects: General Connecting Processes (17 pages)
Raúl García and David Wilk |
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