The Americas This Week
CEC Symposium

Laura Carlsen | March 27, 2003

“Americas This Week” is a weekly column written by Americas Program analysts. Reader responses and comments to this column and other Americas analysis should be sent to: americas@irc-online.org.

From March 24-27, the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC) sponsored its second symposium on Trade and Environment in Mexico City. The event reflected both the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. In the first place, it brought together an informed and committed group of people from all three NAFTA countries to discuss the relationship between trade and environment. On the other hand, government officials--and particularly trade officials--were conspicuous by their absence. As pointed out in a recent Americas Program report (http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2003/0303nacec.html), the lack of government representation demonstrates once again that environmental issues are considered marginal to trade and investment issues between the three nations.

The studies commissioned by the CEC for the most part analyzed specific issues or sectors and the impact of NAFTA on their environmental performance. The focus on concrete tasks for the CEC and its member countries--such as regulatory standardization, data gathering, inspection and monitoring of environmental impacts--tended to overshadow the general issues of the relationship between free trade agreements and the environment that played a more prominent role in the first CEC meeting held in Washington DC in 2000.

Participants noticed one important change this year: when asked if free trade led to environmental improvement none of the presenters answered unequivocally “yes.” The former “ex-ante” models that promised environmental improvement through increased income and investment have fallen by the wayside in favor of a case-by-case approach. In fact, more presenters argued that unless accompanied by carefully designed mitigating policies, free trade exacerbated specific environmental problems. This was clearly the case of invasive species, due simply to increased transport of infested goods.

Mexico was consistently found to be the country with least data available on environmental impacts (see http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-action/series/04-rtk.html). That country also usually had the lowest level of regulation, although it was not necessarily the worst polluter.

The Second Symposium pointed out the need to continue to analyze the relationship between NAFTA and the environment, both to design specific policies needed to improve environmental performance and avoid damage, and also to inform negotiations on new trade agreements such as the FTAA.

- Laura Carlsen <laura@irc-online.org>

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Published by the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC). ©2003. All rights reserved.

Recommended citation:
Laura Carlsen, "CEC Symposium," Americas Program (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, March 27, 2003).

Web location:
http://www.americaspolicy.org/columns/amprog/2003/0303cec.html

Production information:
Writer: Laura Carlsen, IRC
Editor: Tom Barry, IRC
Layout: Tonya Cannariato, IRC