Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
has not become a major focus for environmentalists in the region, even though it has tried
to include non-governmental actors.'
There are many restrictions on meaningful NGO participation in Mercosur proceed-
ings. There are di
culties in accessing information about decisions in the process of being
made, or even those that have already been made within Mercosur (CEDA, 2002).
Documents are not routinely distributed in advance, so, as Hochstetler (2003a,p. 15) sug-
gests, 'meetings can consist of observers sitting at the margins of a room while SGT6
members sit at a central table and make cryptic comments about negotiating documents,
without divulging their actual content'. Another mechanism that permits decision-
makers within Mercosur to deny NGO access to their meetings is to call 'extraordinary'
rather than 'ordinary' meetings, which means that NGOs cannot even attend the
rst day
of the meeting. There is also evidence that levels of participation have actually decreased
over time, perhaps re
fi
ecting the dynamic, already noted, whereby some NGOs choose to
disengage from a process that o
fl
ers few returns, especially after the diluting of the pro-
tocol on environmental issues and the continued narrow pro-trade bias of SGT6.
ff
FTAA
In contrast to Mercosur, the involvement of diverse social actors has been on the agenda
of FTAA from the very beginning. From Quebec onwards, the summits of the Americas
have pronounced on the importance of civil society participation in FTAA deliberations.
The Ministerial reunion in San José in 1998 produced a declaration to this e
ff
ect. At the
Santiago summit, governments con
rmed that they encouraged 'all sectors of civil society
to participate and to contribute in a constructive manner their points of view through
mechanisms of consultation and dialogue created in the process of the FTAA negotia-
tions' (Ricco, 2004, p. 7, my translation). E
fi
orts to promote transparency, access to infor-
mation through the internet (such as text being negotiated between states), public reports
and participation in seminars are held up as evidence of e
ff
orts to reach out to civil society,
even if concerns remain about the technical nature of information provided which is
di
ff
cult for citizens to make sense of (Ricco, 2004).
It is the establishment of a Committee of Government Representatives on the
Participation of Civil Society that forms the centrepiece of FTAA's architecture of par-
ticipation, however. The FTAA draft declares the objectives of the committee to be infor-
mation exchange, establishing procedures for accepting submissions, issuing status
reports on the negotiations and managing civil society inputs. It is dismissed by critics,
meanwhile, as a meaningless side-show. This is due to its absence of authority, work plan
and lack of a real mandate, operating more as a 'drop box' for comments from civil society
than a serious forum for debate. According to FTAA's own website, 'Vice-Ministers and
Ministers are to decide the treatment and response to be given to these contributions'
(ALCA, 2004). Groups can submit recommendations to the committee, 'but the commit-
tee is not obligated to actually consider the views expressed' (Blum, 2000,p. 6). This lack
of follow-up on the impact of proposals submitted has led to sharp criticism of its
e
ff
ectiveness as a mechanism of participation. Global Exchange (n.d.) argue, for example:
Despite repeated calls for the open and democratic development of trade policy, the FTAA nego-
tiations have been conducted without citizen input. A process has been set up to solicit citizens'
views, but there is no real mechanism to incorporate the public's concerns into the actual nego-
tiations. The public has been given nothing more than a suggestion box. At the same time,
