| Montreal, 28/11/2001 – The Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is very pleased to announce that Jonathan Plaut, a member appointed by the United States, will be the JPAC chair for 2002. This will be the third time Mr. Plaut has chaired JPAC since its inception in 1994. An engineer, lawyer, university lecturer and retired director of environmental quality for AlliedSignal Inc., Mr. Plaut is among the original appointees to JPAC, bringing history and experience to the post.
Mr. Plaut has indicated his "pride in being selected for the third time as JPAC chair-partly because it signals the confidence my environmental peers in all three countries invest in me." He added, "in these days when we are increasingly aware of the need for constructive cooperation and links between trade and environmental concerns, JPAC is doing an important job for the North American community. I hope to continue that tradition."
Jon Plaut presently teaches courses in environment and public policy and science and society in the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, and was an industry leader in environmental advocacy, leading a task force at the US EPA, serving as a representative at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, and acting as senior advisor to the United Nations Environmental Program in New York in the 1990s. He is currently also president of the Board of Global Learning, a nonprofit environmental education organization in New Jersey.
JPAC is composed of fifteen members, five from each of the three countries (Canada, Mexico and the United States), who are appointed by their respective governments. Its members act independently and their responsibility is to provide the Council, which is composed of the environment ministers of each country, with their advice on all matters within the scope of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). JPAC's chair is elected for a one-year term and by rotation from among the members appointed for each country.
JPAC official publications can be found on the CEC web site at http://www.cec.org/jpac. To request hard copies of documents, please contact the CEC Secretariat directly by e-mail at jmorin@ccemtl.org, fax: (514) 350-4314 or telephone: (514) 350-4366.
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