| Austin, Texas , 5/12/1996 – A trinational group of top-level environmental authorities and environmental legal experts from the United States, Mexico and Canada met here in Austin to debate outstanding trends in environmental regulatory reform for the first time since the start of NAFTA. Many participants at this two-day conference, New Directions in North American Environmental Reform, looked ahead to the future. "NAFTA offers Chile and other countries in Latin America a framework for building consensus towards stronger environmental protection efforts," said Victor Lichtinger, the Executive Director of the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) -- also known as the NAFTA Environmental Commission. "The North American experience is proving that we can move away from conflict and move closer to action-oriented cooperation which helps prevent disputes and leads to more efficient environmental policy and regulation."
Speakers at the conference identified trends in environmental regulatory reform -- including centralization, devolution and harmonization -- and debated how such trends impact national and international environmental protection efforts. The CEC is developing "principles" for environmental regulatory reform that will help both the public and private sectors evaluate environmental legislation and reform. Lichtinger says such principles may also serve as general guidelines for Latin American countries -- like Chile -- that hope to enter NAFTA and subscribe to its environmental side accord, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). The NAAEC side accord, which created the CEC, commits the governments of the United States, Mexico, and Canada to improve their enforcement of national environmental laws. NAFTA and its side accords, including NAAEC, came into effect in 1994.
The trinational conference in Austin was sponsored by the CEC together with the office of the Texas Attorney General. Participants included Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, the Quebec Minister of Environment, David Cliche, the President of Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology (INE), Gabriel Quadri de la Torre, and Mexico’s Attorney-General for Environmental Protection, Mtro. Antonio Azuela de la Cueva. High-level representatives from the US Environmental Protection Agency, Environment Canada, non-governmental groups and industry also participated.
The CEC, which is equally funded by Canada, Mexico and the United States, is based in Montreal, Canada.
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