United States And Mexico In The Nafta Context Of Regional Environmental Cooperation

Environmental problems have increasingly affected daily life and human survival, from the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, from "Only One Earth" to the concept of "sustainable development", to the efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that international community has made, these are all decided by the transnational characteristics of pollution and environmental protection needs transnational cooperation among countries. Environmental conditions are deteriorating and the pollution transit from one country to another with the international trade and investment activities, especially under the conditions that global trade and cross-border investment growing, which makes cross-border environmental problems are beyond the governance territory of a State, but needs different levels of international cooperation. In this case, an effective international environmental cooperation has a positive practical significance.There are two factors need to take into consideration in the governance of environmental issues:firstly, the impact of the international trade and cross-border investment; secondly, what kind of cooperation among countries will be more effective to solve the environmental problems. Environmental protection as the public goods has the characteristics of scarcity. Striking a balance between the infinite expansion of international capital and the limited environmental resources through the effective exploration of the system is an important issue between the environment, trade and investment. By studying the cooperation between the United States and Mexico in the border area under NAFTA, this thesis explores how the regional regimes arrangement affects environmental Cooperation effectively, which has the theoritical significance. This research paper based on the regional achievements that organizations had achieved in environmental cooperation, combining with the international mechanism theory, transit costs and coordination measures to demonstrat that regional environmental cooperation obtains competitiveness and then suggested the methods to deal with the transantional environment. In order to make this paper more in-depth concrete, I chose environmental cooperation of United States and Mexico in the border areas under NAFTA background as a case study. Through the framework, system building and agreements to analyze US-Mexican regional environmental cooperation and also give lessons to Chinese regional environmental cooperation.The structure of this paper is as follows:The first part explains the concept of regional environmental cooperation from theoretical point and also the relations between the regional environmental cooperation and national sovereignty, investment protection and free trade, then further demonstrates the regional environmental cooperation are the most effective means. Part two outlines the characteristics and practices of member countries in the framework of environmental cooperation. Then analyzes a specific case, the environmental cooperation and results achieved in the border areas between United States and Mexico under the context of NAFTA. The third part summarised the experience of the regional environmental cooperation in NAFTA, as well as the experience that proposed for chinese regional environmental cooperation.