Environmental groups for the first time formalized their role in
shaping U.S. and international trade policy during their
involvement in NAFTA negotiations. John J. Audley identifies the
political forces responsible for forging this new intersection of
trade and environment policy during NAFTA negotiations, analyzes
the achievements of the environmentalists, and explores their
prospects for influencing future trade policy.
The need to reconcile the conflicting paradigms of economic
expansion through free trade and that of limited sustainable
development played a significant part in the political debate.
Reluctant to acknowledge any relationship between these two
principles, traditional trade policy actors were forced to include
environmental interest groups in negotiations when the latter
seriously threatened the treaty by aligning themselves with other
anti-NAFTA interest groups, particularly labor. Other environmental
groups worked with trade advocates to secure compromises in the
agreement. The final bill included unprecedented environmental
provisions, but not without serious infighting within the
environmentalist community.
Drawing on his access to private as well as public documents
exchanged among participants, Audley explores the interactions
among the political actors. He explains how political compromises
between environmental groups and trade policy elites came about,
focusing in particular on the roles played by eleven national
environmental organizations. In identifying their accomplishments,
he concludes that although the environmentalists won some
procedural changes, they failed to modify the norm of unfettered
growth as the guiding principle of U.S. trade policy.
The first book to probe the role that environmental politics
play in trade policy, this volume offers new insights into the
political effectiveness of environmental organizations.
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