The Americas integration process has the potential to support sustainable development. It can pioneer innovative approaches to linking social, environmental and economic issues. It can develop new hemispheric environmental, social and economic development cooperation and international law that contributes to sustainable development. And it can test methods for greater openness (transparency, participation and access to dispute settlement) in sustainable development policy-making.

Key Message - Americas Closer integration in the Americas needs to take place across a spectrum of fronts—social, environmental and civil society—if efforts to promote regional economic cooperation are to bear fruit for sustainable development.

But this potential will not be realized automatically by economic integration, which does not necessarily foster the important social and environmental aspects of sustainable development. IISD's Americas work is carried out jointly by members of the Measurements and Assessments team, and by members of the Trade team. It aims to develop capacity, policy analysis and cooperation toward an Americas integration process that supports sustainable development. It relies to a great extent on partnership with leading research institutes and organizations throughout the Americas, including CISDL, CEMDA, CINPE, CEDA, RIDES, ECOS, CIEDUR, CEDHA, CEHI and CIECA, FOCAL, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The work is based on the recognition that the Americas integration undertaking is broader than the Free Trade Area of the Americas and that non-governmental voices and analysis are increasingly valuable in policy debates. As such, IISD's Americas work focuses on three key areas:

• research and policy analysis to link environment, social and trade laws and policies in Americas hemispheric and sub-regional integration processes;

• capacity development for hemispheric environmental management and sustainable development governance in the Americas; and

• strengthening civil society participation in hemispheric integration.

Featured Content

• The Americas Capacity Assessment Project
  (A joint project of IISD's Measurements and Assessment team, UNEP and CISDL). The ACA Project seeks to strengthen capacity for environmental and sustainable development management in the Americas, by identifying hemispheric gaps and priorities for ESD capacity and institution building, increasing awareness of ESD issues among policy-makers in the Americas, and engaging LAC civil society and government partners.

• Trade Rules and Sustainability in the Americas Project
  This project, spanning six years from 1998 to 2004, brought together a Hemispheric Working Group guided by expert advisors, to find ways for new integration rules to support sustainability in the Americas. It produced a trilogy of books, looking at trade rules in trade, environment and social regimes and asking in each case whether there were existing examples of how those types of rules at the regional and sub-regional level were being used to support the "Winnipeg Principles," of trade and sustainable development.

• Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum
  IISD was one of eight research organizations from throughout the Americas that brought together hundreds of civil society representatives to two days of parallel meetings at the November 2003 Miami Ministerial Meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The final results were presented at a special meeting of the Hemisphere's Trade Ministers.

• The Quebec City Hemispheric Trade and Sustainability Symposium
  Hosted by IISD, IUCN and UNEP, the Symposium gathered 200 Americas experts in Quebec City during the 2001 Summit of Americas, producing background papers and a Chair's Paper for the Summit.

• Previous Americas Work
  IISD and its hemispheric partners have a rich body of work spanning over five years, comprising meetings, books, articles, research papers, collaborative statements and more.

• Partners in IISD's Americas Work
  The people and institutions with whome we collaborate in the course of our work.