Impact of Two NAFTA Institutions on Border Water Infrastructure

Abstract

Environmental concerns surrounding the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to an agreement establishing the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and the North American Development Bank (NADBank) to promote water, wastewater, and solid waste infrastructure projects in the U.S.-Mexico border region. The creation of these organizations represents a unique cooperative attempt to address environmental infrastructure needs of a transboundary region through a trade agreement. The development assistance provided by these organizations is innovative because of its focus on producing debt-financed and user-fee-supported projects that are developed with public participation.Because BECC and NADBank are significant components of the governments’ efforts to address environmental infrastructure needs in the region, their performance is significant in determining how well government assistance has addressed the region’s environmental problems. Between 1995 and 2000, BECC and NADBank helped develop forty water and wastewater projects via BECC’s certification efforts and technical assistance for project development and NADBank’s financing packages and capacity-strengthening for water and sewer service providers. Although these projects represent significantly more investment in environmental infrastructure than had been made in previous years, they only covered in six years of operation about 13% of the water and wastewater infrastructure needed for the region between 1994 and 2003. Beginning in late 2000, BECC and NADBank expanded the range of environmental infrastructure projects that they would support through certification and financing.KeywordsBorder RegionLocal BranchNorth American Free Trade AgreementGross National ProductSewer ServiceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.