INECE Cosponsors Workshop on South American Regional Enforcement Activities

On February 10, 2003, the INECE Secretariat co-sponsored a panel discussion “Fostering Environmental Compliance in South America: Constraints and Opportunities” where a over fifty individuals heard presentations and participated in a round table discussion concerning environmental compliance and enforcement challenges facing South American countries. The gathering at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., also co-sponsored by the World Bank Institute and the Government of the Netherlands, focused on the need to understand the limitations and opportunities that countries in South America face in safeguarding and improving environmental quality in the face of development pressures.

Discussion moderator and World Bank counsel Charles Di Leva, acknowledged his organization’s commitment to ensuring that its lending practices encourage good governance and adherence to the rule of law. Daniel Sabsay, Executive Director of FARN-Argentina, and Antonio Benjamin, EPC member and public prosecutor in Sao Paulo, Brazil, gave presentations that detailed the exceptional and irreplaceable biological resources that are threatened by unconstrained development. They also explained the ways the environment in their countries is threatened because of a culture of noncompliance, decentralized and overlapping governmental authority, corruption, and a lack of fiscal and technical resources dedicated to environmental protection. They provided an overview of recent legislative and regulatory developments in their countries as well as efforts to educate prosecutors and judges that may lead to improved environmental compliance and enforcement.

Durwood Zaelke, INECE Secretariat director, explained the critical role INECE can play in helping countries like Brazil and Argentina meet the challenges facing them. Zaelke cited the high stakes of a continued failure by the global community to address environmental degradation and explained INECE initiatives contained in its recently adopted Strategic Implementation Plan. He detailed the way INECE efforts, including those focused on delineating compliance and enforcement indicators, strengthening compliance and enforcement capacity, development of a South American regional network, and creation of an environmental prosecutors network, can help countries like Brazil and Argentina clear the compliance and enforcement hurdles facing them.

The discussion generated a series of recommendations, including:

• The very real risk of corruption requires that environmental laws and regulations incorporate transparent processes and generally minimize the amount of decision-making latitude given to individual officials and enforcement personnel;
• Industrialized countries must ensure, as with the EU model, that environmental compliance and enforcement commitments, based on both adequate laws and sufficient resources, are in place prior to the signing of multilateral trade or assistance agreements;
• The link between poverty, short term resource exploitation (sometimes called “development”), and environmental degradation should be exposed and articulated;
• Cooperative studies and showcase projects that illustrate compliance and enforcement successes should be utilized as models for other countries and regions with similar historic, cultural, and environmental backdrops.
• Non-governmental organizations and academic institutions need to increase their contributions and oversight in this arena to support improved compliance and enforcement, develop grass roots constituencies, and, if necessary, bring pressure to force governments to take action and assume responsibility for environmental conditions;