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Published in Spring 2001
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Summit of the Americas: Reflecting on the CEC experience
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By Janine Ferretti, CEC Executive Director
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Read related article: Lessons from the NAFTA on trade and environment
In an open market that spans a continent, protecting the environment in any one of the participating countries becomes intertwined with activities in all the others. Questions arise, such as: How effectively is each of the trading partners enforcing its domestic environmental legislation? How well are the partners meeting their goals to reduce contaminants that may cross borders through air, water or in traded goods? How well are they protecting the continent’s biological diversity? What are the environmental impacts of free trade? Does pollution grow or shrink as economies become interlinked through trade agreements? Do environmental regulations become weaker or stronger because of trade rules? What is the role of the public in examining environment and trade rules?
During the NAFTA negotiations, public concern over these and other similar questions spawned the establishment of an environmental side accord under which CEC was created. Its job is to help answer these questions and develop tools that will help Canada, Mexico and the United States respond to the challenges and seize the opportunities that continent-wide free trade presents in protecting the shared North American environment.
As delegations from across the Americas prepare over the coming weeks to consider the possibility of establishing a hemispheric free trade zone, questions about the environmental dimensions of the story are inevitably on the minds of many people. Former Quebec Premier Pierre Marc Johnson, who chaired CEC’s symposium last fall on the environmental impacts of free trade, will co-chair the upcoming Hemispheric Trade and Sustainability Symposium in Quebec City in April. In considering future trade and environment regimes in the Americas, Dr. Johnson suggests the CEC experience bears reflection, and we are pleased to present some of his ideas here in the pages of Trio.
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