| Montreal, 16/03/1998 – The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) — created by a
side accord to NAFTA — has contracted with the Morris K. Udall Foundation and the
Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy in Tucson, Arizona to develop and implement a
public input process on the forthcoming Draft Expert Report on the Upper San Pedro
Watershed. The report to be submitted to the CEC Secretariat examines the hydrological and
ecological features of the Upper San Pedro Watershed, as well as the current legal and
institutional frameworks with an impact on conservation effort in the area.
The Draft Expert Report will be released in April. The public input
process that will follow is designed to allow maximum public review of and comment on the
Expert Report during the 45-day public comment period following its release. There will be
a number of venues available for public input during the comment period, including a
dedicated telephone line, e-mail account, written survey response forms, and public
workshops.
The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, an independent research
unit at the University of Arizona with expertise in public policy analysis and designing
public participation processes, will oversee and coordinate the public input process. It
will collect public input independent of the CEC, and produce a separate digest
summarizing the public input. In late May, this summary of the public input will be made
available to the public.
The public input digest will also be submitted to the Expert Team to
inform their revisions to the Draft Expert Report, to the CEC Secretariat, and to the
Advisory Panel that will make recommendations to the CEC Secretariat on the conservation
of the Upper San Pedro River. A final report being prepared by the CEC Secretariat under
Article 13 of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC)—the
environmental side accord to NAFTA—will be ready this summer.
The CEC, which is based in Montreal, is funded equally by the
governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States. | 
