Report

The FTAA and Hemispheric Integration: Building a Triple-Win Strategy for Trade and Sustainability in the Hemisphere

By Karel Mayrand, Marie Claire Segger (Cordonier Gehring) on October 25, 2002
The Americas integration process was launched at the Miami Summit in 1994. Along with democracy, trade liberalisation and sustainable development were adopted as the main thrust of hemispheric integration, as reflected in the first headline of the Miami Declaration of principles: Partnership for Development and Prosperity: Democracy, Free Trade and Sustainable Development in the Americas. Parallel processes were established to implement trade liberalisation and sustainable development. The first one set the goal to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), launched formally in 1998 at the Santiago Summit of the Americas with the specific objective to complete negotiations by 2005. A second initiative was to hold a hemispheric Summit on sustainable development in Bolivia in 1996 to follow up on the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, and establish a blueprint for sustainable development in the Americas.

Report details

Publisher
IISD
Copyright
IISD, IUCN, UNEP/ROLAC, 2002