The Environment and NAFTA: Understanding and Implementing the New Continental Law

Simon Dalby is an assistant professor of geography at Carleton
University in Ottawa.

This well-written and copiously documented account of the environmental
dimensions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will
likely become a standard reference volume on the topic. Written by
high-profile lawyers, the book is accessible and well organized.
Detailed appendices reprint the important parts of the environmental
agreements.

The authors adopt the conventional “ecological modernization”
perspective on environment and its relation to economic development.
They argue that economic growth provides the necessary wealth to
undertake resource management and pollution control, and that NAFTA and
the parallel North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation
(NAAEC) provide a framework for co-ordinating these processes on a
continental scale despite the regional disparities of economic
development. They explore many of the finer points of the legal
mechanisms, arguing that some of the innovative measures in the NAAEC
may yet prove to have considerable practical importance when they are
tested in courts and international negotiating forums.

The book devotes little attention to the arguments of environmentalist
critics. Nonetheless, the authors’ careful exposition of the
conventional case will no doubt be useful for critics and conventional
thinkers alike, not least because the roles of nongovernment
organizations in the new arrangements are discussed in detail.