ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
process, the opportunities provided for environmental NGO participation
have not been realised; indeed, American and Mexican environmental NGOs
have reduced their involvement in the implementation of NAFTA (Sanchez
2002 :1381). By contrast, businesses have been strengthened by NAFTA and
have ensured that the three federal governments and NAFTA institutions
have interpreted NAFTA/NAAEC quite narrowly in trade terms, so that the
environment has been treated primarily as anobstacleto freetrade (ibid.:
1388).
On the wider question of NAFTA’s environmental impact, the jury is still
out. Most studies seem to report a mix of findings, some positive, some nega-
tive (Deere and Esty 2002 ; Markell and Knox 2003 ). The key Mexican–US envi-
ronmental issue is transboundary pollution. Many Mexican standards have
been raised, Mexican companies have signed compliance action plans and
when NAFTA was launched the enforcement of regulations became much
stricter, but subsequently enforcement has slackened, and Mexican govern-
ment funding to help firms with compliance has declined (Vogel 2006 : 367).
Overall, there seems little evidence of any significant improvement in Mex-
ican environmental degradation. Environmental standards in the USA have
changed little as a result of NAFTA, and Canada’s post-NAFTA record is even
less impressive (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005 :151–2). There is consensus that
theCEC has had little impact, although it has helped produce agreement
between the three federal governments to phase out a range of dangerous
chemicals and pesticides (Vogel 2006 : 366).
On balance, despite its early green image, NAFTA has disappointed the
environmental lobby. Its environmental innovations have struggled to make
any significant impact on the trade–environment nexus. It is not surprising
that environmental NGOs regard President Bush’s proposed free trade agree-
ment with Central and Latin America with considerable trepidation (Deere
and Esty 2002 ;Vogel 2006 : 368).◗ The European Union
In many respects it is unproductive to compare the EU with NAFTA, for
theEUisaunique supranational institution with unprecedented powers
toremove sovereignty from member states in pursuit of the twin aims of
economic and political integration. Yet the driving objective behind it has
always been trade liberalisation within a common market, which has forced
the EUtoconfront familiar trade and environment tensions, but with a very
different outcome from NAFTA.
The Treaty of Rome that established the Common Market in 1957 was
committed to the promotion of ‘continuous expansion’ and made no men-
tion of environmental protection, let alone sustainable development (see
Box10.2). As environmental issues rose up the global agenda in the early
1970s, European leaders increasingly recognised the need to introduce