UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460 OFFICE OF THE ADMINISTRATOR May 15,2006 The Head Librarian EPA's Headquarter Library Room 3340 EPA West Building MC: 3404T Washington, DC 20460 Dear Librarian: Enclosed arc two copies of the 2005 reports of the U.S. National Advisory Committee (NAC) and the U.S. Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). This notification is provided to you in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FAC A) Section 13. NAC Advice letters: • Advice letter: May 20, 2005 • Advice letter: November 16. 2005 GAC Advice letters: • Advice letter: May 19,2005 • Advice letter: November 22, 2005 Sincerely, Oscar Carrillo Designated Federal Officer Recycled/Recyclable Printed with SoyfCanola Ink on paper thai contains at least 50% recycled fiber ------- IMS. Governmental Advisory Committee Independent Federal Aitruorj on the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation Committee Members Chair Stephen M Mahfood Telephone 573-694-6150 E-mail kasmahf@cs com Designated Federal Officer Oscar Camllo Tel 202-233-0072 camllo oscar@qa.gov Charles Collette Florida Michael J Colvin Ohio Lisa Cover New Mexico Robert Huston Texas Karl Kalbacher Delaware Sarah D. Lile Michigan James R Mate Texas Ricardo Martinez California Placido Dos Santos Arizona Harvey Rubin Florida Colin Soto Arizona May 19,2005 The Honorable Stephen L. Johnson Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20460 Dear Administrator Johnson: The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to the U.S. Representative to the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) met from April 27 through April 29th, 2005, in Washington, D.C. It is my pleasure to submit to you the following report from our meeting. This letter provides advice on four major topics: 1) Capacity Building, 2) the CEC's Operational Plan and Budget and its relation to the Ten- Year Review recommendations, 3) the Article 10(6) process, and 4) issues related to information sharing and the use of GAC expertise. First, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on becoming the 11th Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We look forward to working with you and providing you relevant and timeJy advice. In addition, we would like to express our appreciation to all of the private sector representatives who provided valuable information on environmental capacity building activities in Mexico. We especially want to thank three members of the National Advisory Committee who were instrumental in making the Business Roundtable a success, namely Aldo Morell, from DuPont, Rich Guimond, from Motorola and Adam Greene, from the U.S. Council for International Business. We also want to recognize the work of EPA's Office of Cooperative Environmental Management for their hard work in organizing our meetings. We appreciate the participation of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and EPA's Office of International Affairs. The information they provided was very useful in developing our advice. Doug Wright's presentation on behalf of the CEC Secretariat was also very useful in understanding the current status of the budget and the Commission's strategic direction. In addition we would like to thank Duiker Desai, a member of Joint Public Advisory Committee for participating in our meeting. Administrative support Tor the GAC is provided by the U S environmental Protection Agency, Office of Cooperative Environmental Management Mail Code I60IE, 655 15*51 Suite 800 Washington, D C 20005 (1)202-233-0072 (0 202-233-0060 ------- We spent most of our time on the topic of environmental capacity building which is one of the guiding pillars in the new CEC strategic plan. Our meeting included a one-day Business Roundtable to examine successful environmental capacity building initiatives by the private sector and others in Mexico. The Roundtable brought together senior industry and multilateral organizations to learn about successful environmental partnerships. The roundtable included a wide spectrum of speakers ranging from DuPont, Motorola, to the World Bank and USAID. Both the GAC and NAG members were very impressed with the caliber of speakers and presentations. Please see attachment A for a copy of the Roundtable agenda. We hope our advice is useful in developing U.S. positions on capacity building and for your preparations for the CEC Council Session in Quebec City, Canada on June 21-23. If your schedule permits, we would very much welcome the opportunity to meet with you there, as the GAC did last year. We would also like to pursue a joint meeting of the advisory committees, as we have traditionally done in the past. Sincerely, Stepfte^ M. Njahfobd, Chair Governmental Advfcory Committee cc. Judith Ayres, Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of International Affairs Jerry Clifford, Deputy Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of International Affairs John Knox, Chair, U.S. National Advisory Committee Arturo Duran, Chair, Joint Public Advisory Committee Jean Perras, Chair, Canadian National Advisory Committee Members of the U.S. Governmental Advisory Committee: Charles Collette Sarah D. Lile Michael Colvin James R. Matz Lisa Cover Ricardo Martinez Robert Huston Harvey Rubin Karl Kalbacher Placido Dos Santos Colin Soto ------- Governmental Advisory Committee to the U.S. Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation Advice 2005-1: Environmental Capacity Building As you know, the CEC is going through a process of deep introspection to see how it can improve the impacts of its initiatives The Ten-Year Review of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the NAFTA recommended among other things that "the CEC should seek a more systematic engagement of the business community " Thus, the Business Roundtable was a way to make this a reality by beginning the engagement. During our Roundtable meeting we heard presentations from private sector representatives, multilateral organizations, and foundations on the subject of successful environmental capacity activities in Mexico. We were quite impressed with the wide-array of successful projects on the ground in Mexico. We saw significant potential for collaboration among the different non-governmental entities working in Mexico. The CEC can play an important catalyst role in fostering that collaboration. We recommend that the U.S. support the CEC role of catalyst and empower the Secretarial to take the lead in aligning private sector capacity building activities We recommend that the U.S. share with the CEC Council the various presentations and summary of the NAC/GAC Roundlable meeting The CEC should serve as an information clearinghouse on capacity building projects throughout North America. In the short-term, we recommend that the CEC develop a compilation of successful environmental capacity building partnerships on their website. We are also highly supportive of an initial CEC capacity building conference; bringing together 12 to 15 companies and/or organizations to start the process of developing synergies among existing private sector capacity building efforts. The CEC can serve as the catalyst that ties together a lot of the current capacity building activities in the region. The CEC can play a key role in developing a strategic approach to capacity building. Also, we feel it is important that the U.S. allow this process to move forward without setting too many walls or prescriptive guidelines. Organizations involved in capacity building are doing the work based on their enlightened self-interest. We recommend that the U.S. support this collaborative exercise in order to create critical mass for future productive action. We are mindful of the political realities in the NAFTA countries and support the CEC developing strong ties in the private sector, foundations, and academia, which will provide long-term sustamability for capacity building initiatives ------- Governmental Advisory Committee to the U.S. Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation Advice 2005-2: CEC Program Plan & Ten-Year Review and Assessment Committee (TRAC) We would like to commend the Secretariat and the Parties for continuing to work at implementing the TRAC Report recommendations and the three pillars developed in the Puebla Council Session in 2004. We acknowledge that 2004 and 2005 have been transition years as it relates to the development of the CEC's Operational Program Plan and Budget. However, we believe that in order to keep CEC programs running efficiently and effectively, future program plans should not take a year to be negotiated and approved by the Parties. We recommend that during the Council Session in Quebec City, the U.S. propose a process to ensure the approval of the 2006 Program plan by December 2005. We encourage the U.S. to provide the GAC with a draft of the 2006 Program Plan and Budget prior to our meeting in October 2005. In addition, we have challenged the U.S. to support the CEC being a "conveyor belt" for addressing important continental environmental issues. In pursuing the conveyor belt metaphor, we recommend the development of brief action reports after the Secretariat has handed-off projects to other qualified organizations. This will serve as a self-affirmation of project closures. We consider this report a key tool that will assist the U.S. in realizing the goal of maintaining a productive and focused Secretariat. Such brief action reports should be no longer than 3 to 5 pages. Furthermore, we believe the TRAC report contains very valuable recommendations As the U.S. takes the leadership of the CEC Council in July 2005, we encourage the U S to use the TRAC recommendations as a point of reference for the next year. We recommend that the U.S encourage the CEC Council to follow the TRAC report's fourteenth recommendation which states that "the Council, with the executive director's assistance andJPAC's advice, report publicly on the implementation of the these recommendations, including those which have been fully or partially implemented and those which have not, with the reasons, to the 2006 annual meeting of the Council. " The GAC feels that the Council's response should also include how they will incorporate appropriate TRAC recommendations into the CEC's Operational Plan and Budget. ------- Governmental Advisory Committee to the U.S. Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation Advice 2005-3: Article 10(6) Working Group The GAC was pleased to hear that the Article 10(6) Environment and Trade Officials Working Group are meeting regularly and making progress on the Trade and Environment pillar set forth in the Puebla Declaration We commend the group for coming to the near completion of their "project assessment criteria." Furthermore, per our advice 2004-1, we want to reemphasize that the "CEC should not be too heavily involved in project implementation activities, instead it should always be looking for outside implementation opportunities i.e, handing off projects to other qualified organizations " We recommend that the final project assessment criteria in the Trade and Environment pillar incorporate the element of "handing off" successful projects as a component of their project timeline ------- Governmental Advisory Committee to the U.S. Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation Advice 2005-4: Information Sharing and Use of GAC Expertise The GAC is always appreciative of the opportunity to provide advice to the U S. government on issues related to the implementation on the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. The GAC represents the views of State, local, and tribal governments. In this section, we would like to address a few recommendations that wilt make our consultative efforts more effective. In past meetings we have been charged with answering questions from EPA prior to our meetings. These questions are very important to the GAC and help us to focus our discussions During our April meeting we did not receive any specific charges and this made our advisory role more difficult to grasp. We understand there arc staff shortages in the Office of International Affairs, but we want to reiterate the importance of receiving specific requests for advice so as to focus our attention appropriately. Furthermore, we think EPA's Office of International Affairs missed an opportunity to hear first-hand of the good work being done by numerous organizations on environmental capacity building in Mexico that was reported at the Business Roundtable on April 27th. Please see attachment A for a copy of the Business Roundtable agenda. ------- |