NAFTA and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation: A New Model for International Collaboration on Trade and the Environment
![handle is hein.journals/colenvlp5 and id is 281 raw text is: Colorado Journal of
International Environmental
Law and Policy
Volume 5, Number 2 Summer 1994
NAY7A and the North American
Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation: A New Model for
International Collaboration on
Trade and the Environment
J. Owen Saunderst
I. INTRODUCTION
The North American Free Trade Agreement' (NAFTA) has both been
attacked by environmentalists for its insensitivity to environmental issues
and hailed as a breakthrough example of a green trade agreement.
However one evaluates these conflicting views, the NAFTA is significant
in that it represents an example of concerted, and at least to some degree
effective, action by the environmental community to place environmental
issues on the international trade agenda, as evidenced by the separate side
agreement on the environment which became part of the political price
exacted for gaining assent to the NAFTA proper. Moreover, the NAFTA
experience has potentially wider applicability than merely in the North
American context. At a minimum, of course, the approach will certainly
t Executive Director, Canadian Institute of Resources Law, and Adjunct Professor,
Faculty of Law, The University of Calgary. The author would like to thank Lee Lau, a
University of Victoria law student visiting the Institute as a Research Assistant, for his
research assistance with this article.
1. North American Free Trade AgreementBetween The Governmentof Canada, The
Government of the United Mexican States, and The Government of the United States of
America, Dec. 17, 1992 (entered into force Jan. 1, 1994) [hereinafter NAFTA].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/colenvlp5&div=21&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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