The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of North America hosted a meeting of experts, representatives of the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States, representatives of intergovernmental organizations and others, on "Assessing the Environment in the context of North American Market Integration." The purpose of this Note is to provide some highlights of the meeting, held 17-18 January 2002. All papers presented during the meeting can be found at: http://www.cec.org/calendar/details/index.cfm?varlan=english&ID=1701.
The CEC Secretariat provided an overview of its past and current focus of work involving environmental assessments of free trade. Since 1994, the CEC has focused on questions of methodology, as well as backward-looking (or ex post) environmental reviews of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This work has been supported by a growing number of sector-specific studies. (In early 2002, the CEC released the final version of 13 sectoral studies, ranging from the environmental effects of NAFTA on forestry, hazardous waste traffic, trade in services and fisheries. ) (...) |