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What is the ACA Project?

The 2001 Quebec City Summit of the Americas Declaration states clearly that for heads of state, the "goal is to achieve sustainable development throughout the Hemisphere."^[1] In the accompanying Quebec City Plan of Action, governments also prioritize a pressing need to "[c]onsult and coordinate domestically and regionally, as appropriate, with the aim of ensuring that economic, social and environmental policies are mutually supportive and contribute to sustainable development, building on existing initiatives undertaken by relevant regional and international organizations."

Economic growth and environmental protection are valuable international priorities with a complex and sometimes poorly understood relationship on all levels. For sustainable development, these policies must become mutually supportive, but it is not automatic that they will.

This commitment to sustainable development in the Americas, at least in the declarations that give policy guidance to the hemispheric integration process, remains an overarching priority. The 1996 Santa Cruz de la Sierra Special Summit of the Americas Declaration cautioned that "[d]evelopment strategies need to include sustainability as an essential requirement for the balanced, interdependent, and integral attainment of economic, social, and environmental goals."^[2] Under the auspices of the Summits of the Americas, countries have initiated a process of hemispheric co-operation on health and environment issues (Health and Environment Ministers of the Americas - HEMA). The 2001 Quebec City Summit also recognised the need for equilibrium between the economic, social and environmental elements of the hemispheric integration process. Governments agreed "to strengthen environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources with a view to ensuring a balance among economic development, social development and the protection of the environment, as these are interdependent and mutually reinforcing."^[3] There is a commitment to support cooperative environmental partnerships for sustainable development—to build an "environmental foundation for sustainable development." They welcomed and endorsed the areas of co-operation from the 2001 meeting of Americas Environment Ministers in Montreal, and committed to further co-operation on pressing clusters of ESD priorities. Some ESD accords and institutions already exist to address these issues,^[4] but gaps also exist, and each issue may have important links to the trade agenda.^[5]

The ACA Project, through Americas Capacity Assessment and Americas Capacity Action, seeks to address this commitment. (In Spanish, "acà" means "over here" or "this place"). The ACA Project will conduct joint Canadian-LAC civil society analysis, building results of existing national studies and a "reality check" survey in the region, to uncover national and sub-regional gaps in existing capacity and identify priorities. Then, it will develop and test new materials for hemispheric ESD capacity development and through a hemispheric engagement strategy, build strategic alliances to mainstream environmental management into social and economic policies and laws.

The ACA Project is a collaborative initiative that is being carried out in four discrete components or 'Phases'. Phases 1 and 2 focus on the "Americas Capacity Assessment." Phase 1 identifies ESD priorities and capacity-building needs common to all sub-regions, proposes institutional arrangements to support such an agenda, identifies key intersections between social and environmental, and economic policy making where capacity building is needed, and develops a methodology for sub-regional ESD institutional capacity assessment in the Americas. Phase 2 involves an ESD project Workshop in montreal, Canada, and an Experts Roundtable Event in Ottawa, Canada, to debate the priorities and other issues identified in the Phase 1 Working Papers, and to discuss proposals for Americas ESD cooperation, including the new Draft FTAA environmental provisions. Then, in Phases 3 and 4, the ACA Project will focus on "Americas Capacity Action". Partners will test the sub-regional institutional capacity assessment methodology, carry out ESD capacity-development activities, and strengthen strategic alliances through an engagement strategy in upcoming hemispheric events to prepare for the Argentina Summit of the Americas in 2005, where the results of the project will be launched.

Closer cooperation for sustainable development takes place in a context of ongoing Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations. The FTAA could either support environmental management and sustainable development (ESD), or detract considerable effort and resources from its realisation. The environmental aspect of these negotiations will be key to achieving an agreement that actually supports sustainable development. Canada has made a significant effort to include parallel agreements on the environment in the successful Canada-Chile FTA, the recent Canada-Costa Rica FTA, and more recently, in the present Canada-Central America FTA negotiations. The U.S. Trade Promotion Authority holds an explicit mandate for environmental provisions in the FTAA, and the U.S. has negotiated an FTA with Chile which includes environmental provisions.

It appears possible that, as part of the Summits of the Americas process, an FTAA will either include environmental and social provisions, or a parallel mechanism will be negotiated to provide environmental and social value-added. It is even possible that both approaches will develop over the next two years of negotiations.

At this juncture, to participate in any upcoming environmental and social negotiations parallel to an FTAA (or in the context of the Summit of the Americas process) and certainly, to meaningfully implement any new cooperation mechanisms, Latin American and Caribbean civil society organizations (and their countries) need information, analysis and capacity. And further, the Latin American and Caribbean governments need access to this expertise, if they are to be successful in developing environmental or social co-operation mechanisms, linked or parallel to the trade process, which is more than a "fig leaf" to be traded, in the end. A time is coming when collaborative efforts will be essential on all levels, and key actors in each country need capacity and networks. To provide this capacity, and these networks, the first component of the ACA Project seeks to involve civil society and governments in a process to define their priorities—based on solid research into which areas are already covered on the ground, by whom, and what are the gaps.

The ACA Project, through a workshop and side-meetings in upcoming hemispheric events, will focus on the questions:

• How to help new hemispheric cooperation mechanisms, should they be negotiated, to effectively address the most pressing ESD priorities in the Western Hemisphere?

• How to build ESD management capacity, and capacity for more effective ISDL implementation, in the countries and sub-regions of the Americas?

• What should any potential environmental and social cooperation negotiations aim to achieve, and how would these be financed? What kinds of strategic alliances are needed to ensure that social, environmental and economic constituencies can start to work together for sustainable development?

• What do independent civil society groups recommend, and how can LAC civil society groups work with their own national authorities to make their recommendations known and become part of the process?

Then, through a series of Sub-Regional Workshops and a Sub-Regional Engagement Process, the ACA Project will undertake to:

• Design capacity building materials for decision-makers and civil society on a series of ESD priority issues,

• Field-test these materials through a series of sub-regional workshops which result in stronger ESD capacity in the Americas sub-regions,

• Build sub-regional networks of civil society, academic, government and business leaders on key hemispheric ESD priorities in the social, environmental and economic (trade) consitituencies, leading to broader hemispheric consensus on links between trade, environment and sustainable development issues towards the Argentina Summit of the Americas.