Among the key issues shaping the free trade and economic globalization debate is the question of how trade liberalization affects environmental quality, either in terms of direct effects on our environment, or indirectly, for instance, the effects that such trade laws as those codified in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have on hard-fought national environmental standards and regulations. Work in assessing the environmental effects of free trade continues to undergo significant improvements: assessment methodologies have improved; environmental data—although still filled with gaps and lack of comparability among trading partners—continue to become more robust; and tools able to draw links between trade-related economic changes and environmental changes continue to be developed. Among these and many other improvements, perhaps the most important will be establishing the means for ensuring that civil society is engaged early, and engaged meaningfully, in environmental assessments of the free trade agenda. Indeed, of all the grievances leveled by civil society against trade agreements, the lack of transparency and public participation remains perhaps the loudest. Since the mid-1990s, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)has examined the effects of NAFTA and other trade commitments on the environment. A guiding assumption of the Commission's work is the central importance of transparency and meaningful participation in assessment work. In late 1999, upon the completion of the CEC Analytical Framework for Assessing the Environmental Effects of NAFTA, the Council of the CEC issued a public call for research papers to be presented at a public forum on trade and environment: in essence, these studies were to translate the methodological or "how to" work into action. (...) |
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