TRADE-ENVIRONMENT: Green Groups Challenge NAFTA Environment Panel

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Aug 2 1996 (IPS) - Mexican non-governmental organisations differ with their Canadian and U.S. colleagues in their approach to the environment panel set up to ensure high environment standards under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) was set up to monitor environmental standards in the three countries which are part of the 1994 NAFTA accord, and one of the main issues for the body is how to formalise the link between free trade and environmental protections.

Canadian and U.S. environmentalists have attacked the CEC for being a toothless, voluntary body. But faced with political crisis and corruption at home, Mexican groups rely on even the CEC’s limited powers, says Gustavo Alanis Ortega, president of the Mexican Environmental Law Centre.

Alanis Ortega’s Law Centre and two other Mexican groups — the Committee for the Protection of Natural Resources and the Group of 100 — made a Jan. 18 request to the CEC.

They asked the body to investigate the failure of the Mexican government to comply with its own environmental legislation regarding the construction of a pier for tourist ships on the island of Cozumel in the state of Quintana Roo. Divers all over the world know the area’s reefs.

When the CEC held its third public meeting here Aug. 1-2, North America’s three environment chiefs, including Mexican environment minister Julia Carabias, agreed to conduct a fact-finding probe into the proposed pier. This is the first request by a citizens’ group that the NAFTA body has accepted.

“The Mexicans are so lacking a forum to raise issues that such consultations at the CEC could be useful to them,” says one of the CEC’s strongest critics, Michelle Swenarchuk, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. “For us as Canadians, it is our governments that we should be spending our time on.”

The CEC’s 30-person staff is based in Montreal and is headed by the environmental policy chiefs of the NAFTA members: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head, Carol Browner; Canada’s environmental minister Sergio Marchi; and Carabias, the Mexican minister.

During a public forum convened by the three ministers, Swenarchuk said that the framework for Canada’s environmental legislation, federally and provincially, were being quickly dismantled.

The province of Ontario recently announced plans to eliminate 19 of its environmental laws and 80 regulations — considered among the strongest in Canada — and to permit businesses to police themselves.

At the CEC meeting, Canada’s federal minister Marchi attacked the Ontario government action, saying the provincial officials were following in the footsteps of U.S. right-wing politicians. The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress has opposed linking trade liberalisation and environmental safeguards.

But Swenarchuk warned that Canada’s federal government itself was making drastic cuts to Marchi’s department, Environment Canada, and devolving federal powers for environmental regulation to the provinces — “even though the provinces give no indication that they intend to take up the new responsibilities given to them.”

Only one out of 10 Canadian provinces — Alberta — has ratified the NAFTA environmental side agreement.

The U.S. and Canadian wings of the Sierra Club are urging the CEC to activate article 1114 of the NAFTA agreement which calls for consultations if any of the countries in NAFTA weaken their environmental laws to attract investment.

The CEC has proved to be ineffective in addressing what it was designed to be in the first place, says the Sierra Club.

Specifically, the CEC has ruled that it cannot accept citizens’ submissions when legislatures weaken environmental laws. It will only respond when administrators do not enforce those laws.

But Swenarchuk wonders if the limited resources of environmental organisations in Canada and the United States should be spent on bothering with the CEC at all.

“You have to look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on this conference,” said Swenarchuk. “Is there an acre of land that has benefited from all of this?’