Environmental justice through international complaint procedures? Comparing the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

2009 ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Malgosia Fitzmaurice
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
North American ◽  
Environmental Cooperation ◽  
The North ◽  
Aarhus Convention

Regional Governance of Global Climate Change: The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele M. Betsill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
North American ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Environmental Cooperation ◽  
Climate Governance ◽  
The North

Over the past decade the governance of global climate change has evolved into a complex, multi-level process involving actors and initiatives at multiple levels of social organization from the global to the local in both the public and private spheres. This article analyzes the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) as one component of this multilevel governance system. Specifically, it evaluates the CEC as a site of regional climate governance based on three potential advantages of governance through regional organizations: a small number of actors, opportunities for issue linkage, and linkage between national and global governance systems. On each count I find that the benefits of a CEC-based climate governance system are limited and argue for greater consideration of how such a system would interact with other forms of climate governance in North America.

scholarly journals Improving spatial decision making using interactive maps: An empirical study on interface complexity and decision complexity in the North American hazardous waste trade

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1706-1723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Vincent ◽  
Robert E Roth ◽  
Sarah A Moore ◽  
Qunying Huang ◽  
Nick Lally ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Hazardous Waste ◽  
North American ◽  
Visual Analytics ◽  
Optimal Decision ◽  
Interactive Maps ◽  
The North ◽  
Waste Trade ◽  
Decision Complexity

Spatial decisions increasingly are made by both professional and citizen stakeholders using interactive maps, yet few empirically-derived guidelines exist for designing interactive maps that support complex reasoning and decision making across problem contexts. We address this gap through an online map study with 122 participants with varying expertise. The study required participants to assume two hypothetical scenarios in the North American hazardous waste trade, review geographic information on environmental justice impacts using a different interactive map for each scenario, and arrive at an optimal decision outcome. This study followed a 2 × 2 factorial design, varying interface complexity (the number of supported interaction operators) and decision complexity (the number of decision criteria) as the independent variables and controlling for participant expertise with the hazardous waste trade and other aspects of cartographic design. Our findings indicate that interface complexity, not decision complexity, influenced decision outcomes, with participants arriving at better decisions using the simpler interface. However, expertise was a moderating effect, with experts and non-experts using different interaction strategies to arrive at their decisions. The research contributes to cartography, geovisualization, spatial decision science, urban planning, and visual analytics as well as to scholarship on environmental justice, the geography of hazardous waste, and participatory mapping.

scholarly journals Regional environmental governance: the NAFTA case

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (No. 10) ◽  
pp. 454-466
Author(s):  
E. Cihelková
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Agenda 21 ◽  
Environmental Cooperation ◽  
The North ◽  
Regional Agreements ◽  
Environment And Development

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 elaborated the idea of sustainable development. A comprehensive document called the Agenda 21 provided an explanation how to achieve a sustainable economic development. Along the tools presented in the document, there emerged in practice a new regionalism which is based on the preferential trade agreements. Currently, regional agreements are of a more complex nature, so that they may include environmental cooperation, too. The aim of this paper is to illustrate, on the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a possible approach of regional agreements to environmental cooperation. The paper is divided into four sections. The first one summarizes a general approach to addressing environmental issues within the integration groupings. The second tries to answer the question of whether the NAFTA confirms the general approach to the regional environmental governance. The third deals with the meaning and the failure of the regional governance for the assessment of the cross-border impact of the NAFTA/NAAEC on the environment. The fourth and last section gives an answer to whether the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), as the environmental part of the NAFTA, is a good basis for the effective environmental governance in North America.    

Public Participation in the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

2003 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malgosia Fitzmaurice
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Environmental Cooperation ◽  
The North ◽  
Aarhus Convention ◽  
International Conventions ◽  
National Environmental

The subject of this article is public participation in the NAAEC. It will be analysed against the background of certain other international conventions that make provision, in one way or another, for public participation in relation to environmental protection, in particular, the 1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the ‘Aarhus Convention’) and the 1974 Convention on the Protection of the Environment between Denmark, Finland and Sweden (the ‘Nordic Convention’). The 1950 European Convention of Human Rights will also be referred to in so far as it secures public participation and from the point of view of its effectiveness in assisting in the enforcement of national environmental law. Reference to these instruments will, however, be limited to that which is relevant to the present essay.

Greening NAFTA: The North American Commission for Environmental Co-operation

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 501-502
Author(s):  
Judith McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Economic Integration ◽  
North American ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Environmental Aspects ◽  
Environmental Cooperation ◽  
Question Mark ◽  
The North

Greening NAFTA: The North American Commission for Environmental Co-operation, David L. Markell & John H. Knox, eds., Stanford Law & Politics Series; Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. xv, 324.At first blush, the title of this book, Greening NAFTA, would likely be viewed as an oxymoron by most environmentalists. After all, the environmental critiques of free trade including the massive use of fossil fuels in transporting goods around the globe and a “race to the bottom” as it relates to environmental standards, among others, continue to resonate among North American environmentalists. However, once one has tucked into this volume, it becomes clear that the intent of this edited collection is to examine how effective the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (the NACEC or CEC) has been in its (now) ten years of existence. Its genesis was largely the result of widespread objections made by North American environmental groups and, at the time it was created (1994), it was the first international organization created to address the environmental aspects and issues associated with economic integration. In some respects, a more appropriate title for this edition would have included a question mark after the word NAFTA, because the contributors to this book have very mixed assessments as to whether the CEC has fulfilled its early promise of having a greening effect on NAFTA.

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