Economy & Trade, Environment, Headlines, North America

TRADE: North American Leaders ‘Micro-Managing’ Environment Deal

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Jun 16 2004 (IPS) - The North American environment would be better off if governments agreed to set aside a section of the continent’s free trade deal that lets them pursue one another for not enforcing their laws, says a review of the deal’s “green” accord.

The study, released a decade after the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States came into force, largely praises the body set up to implement NAFTA’s environmental side deal.

But in an interview late Tuesday the head of the review panel said the three governments are over managing a citizens’ complaints process because they fear becoming targets of their fellow governments.

”We believe that the governments are probably micro- managing articles 14 and 15 of the NAAEC, which is the citizens’ submissions process … We’re suggesting to the (environment) ministers they should feel comfortable leaving the Secretariat to do its work in this process,” Pierre Marc Johnson, chair of the body that delivered the report, ‘Ten Years of North American Environmental Cooperation’, told IPS.

The NAAEC is the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which is administered by the Montreal- based Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). Both were created after strong public pressure to write environment protection into NAFTA, the world’s largest free trade deal at the time.

”The national governments sometimes feel uncomfortable because the citizen submission process can lead to very delicate issues,” added Johnson, ”so we’re suggesting they should sort of ignore chapter 5 and commit to ignore it for 10 years, and maybe they’ll leave (articles) 14 and 15 in a freer way.”

In 2003 for example, the attorney general of New York State joined dozens of U.S. and Canadian health and environmental groups in filing a complaint at the CEC against polluting coal- fired power plants in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Soon after, the CEC determined that NAAEC rules disqualified New York from being a party to the complaint. (The submission was rejected last month after a new government in the province promised to phase out coal-produced energy, a move environmentalists supported).

Johnson stressed the review is not suggesting the citizens’ complaint process should be weakened.

”The citizens’ submissions process has been interesting not only in that it can annoy a government and put some sort of shame on them but essentially it sort of forces governments to rethink their implementation policies,” he said.

Added Johnson: ”What we’re saying is that the ministers should meddle as little as possible in that.”

In the citizens’ submission process, after an individual or group files a complaint about lack of enforcement of an environmental law, the CEC Secretariat determines whether the charge warrants approaching the concerned government for a response.

Eventually, the process can lead to the secretariat publicly releasing a ”factual record”, which carries no enforcement power but can lead to an internal review ”and perhaps bring public embarrassment to the party”, according to the report.

As of this February, four factual records have been publicly released in both Canada and Mexico and one in the United States, it adds.

One expert observer says the recommendation to shelve chapter five is probably a realistic one, but that Johnson’s report should have asked for something from the three environment ministers in return.

”It seems to me it would have made some sense for the committee to have made the point (to the ministers), ‘if we let you off this hook you guys have got to stop messing around with articles 14 and 15,” said David Runnalls, president of the Canada- based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

”I think what (the report is) saying is if there some irritants here that could be removed in exchange for really fixing a lot of the rest of this process, and if part five is the thing that sticks in their craw and they don’t use it anyway, you might as well throw it overboard and see if you can’t use it as a wedge to get some kind of renewed commitment out of the ministers,” he told IPS on Wednesday.

In the interview, Johnson, former premier of the Province of Quebec, praised the performance of the CEC.

”People tend to look at the CEC as the citizens’ submissions process, which seems to be entangled in the intervention of governments, but in practice it’s an extraordinary instrument of international cooperation,” he said. ”And it has proven through dozens and dozens of seminars and groupings of experts in the three countries, stakeholders in governments, NGOs and the private sector, that it can be very useful.”

An earlier CEC report found that NAFTA itself was, by and large, positive for the North American environment.

”The three parties have benefited significantly from the NAAEC,” says the Johnson report.

In Mexico, pesticide control and pollution prevention were improved thanks to the agreement while management of chemicals has improved in all three countries, the report reveals. Also, governments have been made more accountable to their environmental laws, it adds.

On the negative side, the three nations’ environment ministers must become more fully engaged in the process, it says, adding, ”The CEC must respond to the calls from business, indigenous peoples and academics to engage them more actively in the activities of the CEC while maintaining the active engagement of environmental NGOs.”

Runnalls calls that ”diplomatic language.”

”The basic problem is that none of the three governments gives a damn about the Commission on Environmental Cooperation … the ministers don’t take it terribly seriously; it’s a very low priority of all three of the ministers.”

He said he was unsure civil society would disagree with the proposal to shelve chapter five.

”I hope people make a hue and cry about something because then maybe somebody will pay some attention to the CEC. Because (the report’s) basic conclusions are right: it’s actually quite a useful organisation; it does only cost nine million dollars a year … if it had a lot more money it could do a lot more quite good work,” he stressed.

But NAFTA’s ”green guardian” suffered from inflated hopes, according to Runnalls.

”The expectations at the beginning were fairly high that this thing would go into the boxing ring and do battle with the bad guys in the free trade commission … So far as I know, despite lots and lots of efforts by the CEC during the first 10 years, the trade ministers and the environment ministers have never been in the same room at the same time.”