Has Nafta hurt the environment while spurring industrialization? Have U.S. firms found waste disposal in Mexico any easier than at home, or is the picture more complicated? These and other questions loomed at a conference on North American Free Trade Agreement’s environmental impacts, held last month in Washington, D.C., by the trilateral Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a Nafta-created agency headquartered in Montreal. Rather than featuring a general discussion, the conference, called “Understanding Linkages Between Trade and the Environment,” took an academic approach. Fourteen research papers on a variety of trade-related environmental impacts were funded and then presented at the conference. The papers used indicators such as changes in ozone concentrations, drinking-water quality and land-use trends to assess Nafta’s environmental effects... [Log in to read more]