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Workshop: Protecting Investor Rights and the Public GoodMarch 13, 2002: Mexico City, Mexico In the spring of 2002, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and collaborators convened three separate one-day workshops featuring candid, high-level debate on NAFTA's Chapter 11 and the environment. The workshops, held in each of the three NAFTA capitals, were part of IISD's Investment Law and Sustainable Development (ILSD) Program. The collaborators were the Ottawa-based Public Policy Forum, the Institute for International Economics in Washington, and, in Mexico, the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE) and the Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (CEMDA). These were small events, designed to air a frank, sophisticated debate on the issues of investment and environment in the context of the NAFTA. The objective was to discuss how we can ensure essential protection of investors while respecting the ability of governments to regulate in the public interest on matters such as environmental protection. The workshops each brought together 30-35 key players from academia, NGOs, private sector, labour and government. The workshops will help provide much-needed input to government policy-makers and to the wider policy community at a time of deep indecision over how to handle the investment provisions in NAFTA and, by extension, in other international treaties. The project will publish a final synthesis report based on all three meetings and the background papers, as well as a policy-makers' summary targeted specifically at the relevant NAFTA government departments. The ILSD workshops were made possible with the generous support of the Ford Foundation,Canada's Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Environment Canada and C.S. Mott Foundation.
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