Reconciling Trade and the Environment: Lessons from the North American Free Trade Agreement - Environment and Trade 3

This document evaluates how the North American Free Trade Agreement incorporated environmental concerns and distills operational lessons for future trade regimes. It traces process choices—timing of integration, participation by environment agencies, NGOs, sub-federal bodies, and the public—and assesses the role of environmental reviews in informing policy. Substantively, it analyzes provisions on investment disincentives for regulatory “races to the bottom,” protection of international environmental agreements, and standards rules that affirm each party’s right to set protection levels, rely on science without demanding “dueling science,” allow precaution, and resist downward harmonization. It reviews dispute-settlement innovations and transparency gaps, the U.S.–Mexico Border Plan’s limits, and the side agreement creating the Commission for Environmental Cooperation with novel enforcement and citizen-submission mechanisms.