Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Latinoamericano, the North-South Center of the University of Miami and latterly
Corporación PARTICIPA and Fundación Esquel at key summits (Botto, 2003). Civil
society groups have also created their own parallel conferences to register their views and
make their voices heard, including on environmental issues. The Cumbres de los Pueblos
(Peoples' Summits) that have been held alongside summits of the Americas as well
as more recent summits of the South American Community of Nations bring together
activists from across the region to generate alternative proposals for integration that
advance social and environmental agendas.
While the focus of this section has been on the institutional opportunity structures
available to civil society within regional trade accords, we should not overlook the impor-
tance of sub-regional agreements such as CAFTA (Central America Free Trade
Agreement) or bilateral accords. Bilateral trade accords provide a potentially impor-
tant policy space for civil society participation. The Chile-Canada Agreement on
Environmental Cooperation, negotiated in parallel with their bilateral free trade agree-
ment, is held up as a positive model for handling environmental protection measures, but
also contains a provision that allows citizens and NGOs of the two parties to make sub-
missions alleging a party's failure to e
ff
ectively enforce its environmental laws. Such sub-
missions may not include complaints a
ff
ecting a private individual or a speci
fi
c productive
activity, although they may be
led against the parties if they fail to enforce their own
environmental legislation (Matus and Rossi, 2002, p. 266). In practice, critics allege that
many of the provisions regarding public participation in the agreement have too many
weaknesses to be e
fi
ectively utilized (CEDA, 2002), but procedures concerning trans-
parency, access to justice and procedural guarantees give others grounds for hope
(Cordonier-Segger, 2005a, p. 204).
It is equally true that bilateral trade accords between unequal partners can be used to
undermine environmental protection measures. The bilateral investment agreement
between the USA and Bolivia, said to have been 'negotiated on behalf of US mining
companies to protect their investments in the mineral rich Andean country' (Cordonier-
Segger, 2005b, p. 156) o
ff
ers few openings for public input regarding the social and envi-
ronmental impacts of mining, for example, and there are no provisions for the pulic release
of documents nor stakeholder participation in investor-state tribunals. Likewise the bilat-
eral trade agreement negotiated between Peru and the USA opens the way to the entry of
GMOs into a susbsistence-based economy, which is a centre of origin for potatoes, by
requiring Peru to synchronize its sanitary and phytosanitary measures with those of the
USA, potentially undermining policy autonomy conferred upon Peru by its membership
of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. There are also fears that measures to strengthen
intellectual property protection in line with US demands will threaten the genetic resources
and traditional knowledge base of indigenous communities in the country (TWN, 2006).
ff
Conclusions
It is clear that top-down mechanisms of participation in trade policy often serve to rein-
force inequities within civil society. In the run-up to ministerial meetings of FTAA, for
example, space was made available for academics, think-tanks and consultants, and not
other elements within civil society. Attempts to construct virtual mechanisms of engage-
ment where groups can deposit suggestions are essentially only taken up by these same
actors: academics, business foundations and a sprinkling of NGOs, principally from
