National Advisory Committee (NAC) To the U.S. Representative to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) Advice 2017-1 (Meeting

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Environment and Trade Working Together

U.S. National Advisory Committee

Independent Federal Advisors on the

North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

Chair

Theresa A. Pardo
Tel. 518-442-3892
tpardo@ctg.albany.edu

Designated Federal Officer

Oscar Carrillo

Tel. 202-564-2294

carrillo.oscar@epa.gov

Committee
Members

Theresa A. Pardo
Chair

New York

David Antonioli

Washington, D. C.

Andrew P. Carey

California

Ann Marie
Chischilly

Arizona

Abbas Ghassemi

New Mexico

Carolyn Green

Pennsylvania

Donald K. Harris

Michigan

Tracy Hester

Texas

Sara E. Hopper

Washington, D. C.

Aminata Kilungo

Arizona

Mary Klein

Virginia

Donna L. Lybecker

Idaho

Justin McCartney

Washington, D. C.

Carlos Perez

New York

April 4,2017

The Honorable Scott Pruitt
Administrator

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460

Dear Administrator Pruitt:

The National Advisory Committee (NAC) to the U.S. Representative to the North
American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) held its forty-eighth
meeting in Washington, D.C. on March 28-29, 2017. On behalf of the members of the
NAC, I wish to welcome you to the EPA and to express our continued commitment to our
role as advisors to you in advancing the mission and strategies of the CEC.

Each meeting of the NAC is structured to ensure the committee can provide advice as
requested in the Charge Questions provided by the EPA to the committee for that meeting.
Our March 2017 meeting was therefore structured specifically to provide members with
the time necessary to engage with each other and EPA to provide feedback on a selected
set of the CEC Operational Plan Preliminary Project Proposals according to a specified
set of criteria provided by EPA. Details on the proposal review process are included in the
attached Advice.

The meeting began with an overview by Mr. Luis Troche, Acting Senior Advisor for
North American Affairs in the Office of International and Tribal Affairs at EPA, on the
status of the CEC Operational Plan process including the status of the review of the twelve
preselected, preliminary project proposals. Following his overview Mr. Troche took
questions from the members of the NAC and GAC regarding the overall process and on a
number of the project proposals themselves. Mr. Troche was invaluable to the process as
he remained at the meeting as a resource in support of the discussions being held in each
of the committees. The afternoon session began with an expanded overview by Mr. Mark
Kasman. Mr. Kasman provided an overview of the larger context of the CEC Operational
Plan, including the upcoming meeting with Jane Nishida and her counterparts in Canada
and Mexico.

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Simone Sagovac

Michigan During the meeting and in support of our work the committees received updates from:
Ivonne Santiago

Texas • Cesar Rafael Chavez, Executive Director of the CEC Secretariat (via

videoconference), provided an update of programmatic progress under the 2016-17
Operation Plan and the current round of NAPECA grants.

• Eric Dannenmaier, JPAC Chair, and Bob Varney reported via telephone, on the
recent JPAC session in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico. They noted that their
recent session was streamed via Facebook Live and they had over 5,000 attendees
through that service.

The March meeting ended with a plenary session with Ms. Nashida, Mr. Kasam and Mr.
Troche, during which they received a verbal summary from the Chairs of the NAC and
GAC on the results of their review of the preliminary project proposals. This session
included discussion among committee members and the EPA representatives.

The NAC wishes to express its appreciation to the EPA for their commitment to citizen
engagement. This meeting of the NAC was illustrative of this commitment, and to
ensuring that projects undertaken as part of the CEC Operational Plan benefit from the
perspectives of diverse stakeholder communities, including industry, academics and
nonprofits, as exemplified in the composition of the NAC.

The NAC also wishes to express appreciation for the excellent support provided by the
Federal Advisory Committee Management Division (FACMD) and thank Director
Monisha Harris, NAC/GAC Designated Federal Officer Oscar Carrillo, and all of the
FACMD staff for their support, before, during and after the meeting.

Sincerely,

Theresa A. Pardo, Ph.D., Chair
National Advisory Committee

cc: Jane Nishida, Assistant Administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs
Monisha Harris, Director, Federal Advisory Committee Management Division (FACMD)
Oscar Carrillo, Designated Federal Officer, FACMD
Mark Kasman, Director, Office of Regional & Bilateral Affairs, OITA, EPA
Luis Troche, Acting Senior Advisor, North American Affairs, OITA, EPA
Eric Dannenmaier, Chair, Joint Public Advisory Committee
Cesar Rafael Chavez, Executive Director, CEC

Members of the U.S. National and Governmental Advisory Committees

Administrative support for the NAC is provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Federal, Advisory Committee Management Division, OARM
Mail Code 1601-M, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20460
(t) 202-564-2294(f) 202-564-8129

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National Advisory Committee (NAC)

To the U.S. Representative to the
Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)

Advice 2017-1 (Meeting - March 28-29, 2017)

General Thematic Recommendations: the CEC Operational Plan Preliminary

Project Proposals

Charge Questions:

The March 2017 Charge Questions to the NAC seek advice on twelve preliminary project
proposal descriptions for the 2017-18 the CEC Operational Plan. The projects under
consideration were proposed in line with the trilateral priority areas selected by the
Council/Alternate Representatives, specifically:

•	Trade & the Environment (e.g. environment & innovations; movement of environmental
goods & services)

•	Methane emissions reduction

•	Reduce and recover food waste

•	Black carbon inventory

•	Priority species and ecosystems (e.g. transboundary invasive alien species)

•	Health of oceans (e.g. marine litter; ocean acidification; marine protected areas)

•	Syndromic surveillance systems

•	Mexican Emissions Control Area (TBC) and

•	Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) case studies

The Charge Question seeks feedback from the NAC on the proposals in terms of the following
criteria:

1)	Replicability: opportunities for the projects' approach, outputs and outcomes to be
reproduced in other projects in North America, increasing the efficiency of future
programs

2)	Self-Sustainability: how the projects can be maintained (as needed) beyond the two-year
funding period;

3)	Scalability: especially important for pilot projects, the ability to expand beyond the pilot
programs to affect broader change or result in broader impacts

4)	Incorporating Youth: how well the projects may capitalize on opportunities to involve
young people in project activities or educational experiences.

5)	Incorporating TEK: how well the projects may capitalize on opportunities to incorporate
tribal governments or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).

In addition, upon arrival the committees were also asked to consider the nature of the trilateral
aspect each proposal.

6)	Trilateral Aspect: To what extent does the project fully engage all three countries, or rely
on a trilateral approach for success.

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General Thematic Recommendations:

The NAC's overall impression was that the suite of proposed projects represents a body of work
that could be very important to advancing the priorities of the trilateral council. The
recommendations of the NAC are offered in the spirit of helping the EPA to identify the most
promising projects, and to help strengthen the final proposals to achieve the greatest possible
impact.

After reviewing the proposals, the NAC identified a set of consistent themes found our detailed
comments on each proposal. These themes are described below followed by a project by project
set of observations and recommendations.

• Clarity About the Big Problem. The proposals, in general, missed the opportunity to
strengthen their impact by being clear about the value of the project to addressing a "big
problem." In most cases, the big problem being solved was not made clear. Neither the gap
in capability to solve a big problem, nor how the proposed project would fill that gap were
identified. In most cases, these benefits could be inferred, but the proposals would be
stronger, and more importantly the project purpose and value to future partners and funders
would be more salient, if these aspects were made more clear. Proposers are advised to
clarify the following: What is the big problem that the project will address? What is the local
problem? What is the/are the gap(s) between the current state, capacity or level of knowledge
and the desired state? What is the value of the proposal in terms of filling that gap and
contributing to the solution of the big problem?

• Specificity in Measurable Outcomes. The proposals overall could be improved with more
attention to specificity of measurable outcomes. This lack of specificity is a problem in
terms of the ability to track progress and impact over time and to monitor delivery against
project outcomes. For example, one project uses the term "increase" in describing their
expected outcomes. However, they do not set the baseline, set targets over the baseline, nor
describe the level of effort to achieve the expected increases. This lack of specificity is
problematic overall in the context of project management and the need to justify investments
against public value created. The NAC finds this lack of specificity to be a problem
additionally in terms of our ability to respond to critical questions about sustainability,
replicability, and scalability. We found it difficult to make judgements about these aspects of
the projects because we did not have enough information about if and how outcomes would
be measured. Further, we understand it is not always possible to say exactly what the
outcomes will be, even if you know what the indicators will be, but statements like the
following help set targets in terms of ranges of expected outcomes; "We expect to increase
the number of certified companies from X to a maximum of Y, but no less than Z. The
number of participants we are able to attract to our workshop will play a big role in whether
we are able to achieve our maximum outcome of Y " Members of the NAC agreed that
arguments for sustainability, scaling, and replication will rely on the ability of the project
team to measure outcomes and to clearly communicate them to others. For example, if a
project claims to make a change, but the baseline isn't available then how can the project
team use change data to argue for the long term financial support that is critical to
sustainability; how can they make a case for replication if the outcome data isn't available;
how can you they seek support to scale if the outcome data on isn't reliable or robust?

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• Clarity on Methodology, Approach, Mechanisms. Project proposals lacked of detail in the
descriptions of the methods, approaches or mechanisms that would be used to achieve project
results. For example, in the proposals that included the use of a survey, little (no) detail was
given in terms of how the survey would be developed, tested, adapted, refined, and executed.
In some cases, data was sought from individuals, in others from institutions. None of the
proposals talked about the challenges to such efforts; all proposals seemed to assume best
case scenarios in design, development and deployment. In a number of cases, a proposal
acknowledged the need to adapt instruments whether surveys or tools to local context, but no
information was provided as to how that would be done in terms of selecting the aspects that
need contextualization, contextualizing those aspects, and testing that contextualization to see
if achieved the intended goal, aside from then using them to achieve the project outcomes.
The proposals had limited/no information about what the proposals are building on, or who
the teams are partnering with; this information may have addressed our concerns in terms of
methodology, approaches and mechanisms.

• Clear Links to Related and Larger, Ongoing Efforts. In most cases the proposals did not
situate the project in a larger context; whether historical, best practices, ongoing efforts, or
other related activities. These gaps in the proposals made it difficult to judge whether the
proposal was considering something novel or would in fact duplicate an existing effort, or if
the proposal is heavily dependent on coordination among multiple related efforts or is
independent from such efforts. In all cases, we sought to make judgements about the criteria
such as sustainability and TEK knowledge integration; partnering is central to success in
these areas, without information that situates the proposal in this larger context, judging what
is possible is difficult. The extent to which we could determine whether a project as planned
has the potential to achieve long term sustainability due to a clear plan for leveraging
partnerships is very limited. Due to the lack of information in this regard, it is difficult to
determine for example, if a project team has a plan to tap into the wealth of resources outside
the federal government as part of the sustainability strategy.

• Attention to Long Term Financial Sustainability. The proposals did not articulate well, or
in most cases address, the issue of long term financial sustainability of their projects.

• Communications and Outreach. All projects could be strengthened by broadly using
media (various platforms) and creating media campaigns to communicate about the project
aims, issues that they address, & results - as this can be key to spurring partnerships,
financial leverage, building capacity and shifting cultural norms. Media should aim to reach
different age groups, sectors, and economic/social groups. One well-crafted media campaign
could be replicated for other projects and would multiply the financial investments.

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National Advisory Committee (NAC)

To the U.S. Representative to the
Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)

Advice 2017-2 (Meeting - March 28-29, 2017)
On the 12 Individual Preliminary CEC Project Proposals

Project 1: Building Community Capacity to Reduce Marine Litter in North America
Border Watersheds

1. Get more specifics on exactly which local groups you are engaging. Make sure the set is
representative.

2. Local networks are hard to start and hard to sustain. Focus on engaging local networks that
are already in place (and working), and learn from those that have worked in other regions
(e.g., cases in China and Peru that were mentioned by EPA).

3. How are pilots selected? How are the pilots selected? What do they represent? Are there
choices that provide the most opportunity to leverage the $ invested?

4. The proposal references the trash free waters as a model - but provides no information to let
us know why this is a good choice - the choice or approach isn't rationalized or situated in a
larger context.

5. The proposal claims that the project will "describe" various activities - but it is not clear
what is meant by "describe". What will the project produce that didn't exist before, why are
they producing it and what will the community do with it to create new value once it is
produced?

6. During a previous NAC meeting we heard that this is a solid waste problem - that often the
reason for build-up of marine waste is a consequence of the lack of a reliable solid waste
program - such as in the case of Tijuana - which has no reliable or regular schedule for trash
pickup.

Project 2: Conserving shorebirds through community engagement at key sites in Canada,
the United States and Mexico.

1. The focus on migratory birds that share habitat in the three CEC countries provides a clear
rationale for trilateral engagement.

2. The project, as proposed, is very species focused.

3. Long term sustainability aspect is weak.

4. Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: National Audubon Society (and local Audubon chapters, if applicable),
American Bird Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, iNaturalist (California Academy of
Sciences), American Birding Association, Native American Fish and Wildlife Society

• Local Government: State/local tourism agencies or chambers of commerce

• Academic: eBird (Cornell University)

5. Potential co-sponsors or funders: Ducks Unlimited, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
(NFWF), US Fish and Wildlife Service, optics manufacturers (Bushnell, Cannon, Zeiss,
Leica, Swarovski).

6. The project is strong both in terms of TEK and youth engagement.

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Project 3: Tools for Expanding Food Loss and Waste Prevention, Recovery, and Recycling
in North America

1. The proposal presents the activities as a disparate set of efforts rather than a coherent
program of highly related activities.

2. The proposal is not clear on the potential "big" impact of the effort. The proposal needs to
sharpen its focus on the big parts of the problem

3. The proposal seeks funding to create new measures of food loss, but does not make clear the
issues with the existing measures. This aspect of the proposal is undefined and appears to
include a bit of wishful thinking.

4. The overall data management infrastructure is weak. To accomplish the goals of the project
there appears to be a need to improve the ability to create standard data gathering protocols
and to build professional data management capabilities. With a robust data management
infrastructure, the proposal could target data gaps and a suite of technologies to gather data
using measurement standards across the full supply chain.

5. Is the project addressing the question: What difference does shorter food transit make to food
loss?

6. Tying the goal of sustainability and scalability to food insecurity and food deserts strengthens
the argument.

7. How will data newly available through this project be used to create new understanding
about how to change individual and institutional behavior?

7. Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: Food donation charities and food banks, Transition Town groups

• Federal Government: US Department of Agriculture

• Private Industry: Shipping companies, restaurant chains, agricultural companies (e.g.,
ConAgra, Purdue...), agricultural coops

8. Potential co-sponsors or funders: US Department of Agriculture, agricultural companies

Project 4: Impact of Private Sector Supply Chain Energy Efficiency Efforts through ISO

50001

1. Concerns about the challenges companies face when navigating the bureaucracy of the ISO,
and in particular recommended the project proposal provide additional insight the adoption
and use of IS0500001 vis a vis the wide range of existing ISO standards in the industry.

2. The following question was raised: Does the government need to be involved in this at all?
We recommend an expansion of the proposal that outlines the unique role of government. If
the government does need to be involved, make their role and the rationale for that role very
clear.

3. Members of the NAC urged the project proposal team to consider the rapidly changing
context of energy efficiency policy and practice.

4. A lack of attention to obstacles to making implementation happen and how those obstacles
would be overcome was noted.

5. A lack of attention to the economic opportunities for participating companies that must exist
to make this sustainable was noted.

6. A lack of attention to actions that have helped efficiency in the supply chain to date was
noted. The proposal did not include attention to what else is happening in related or larger
efforts. For example, numerous related ISO efforts.

7. Measurable results have no baseline or targets for the suggested increases or mechanisms to
make the increases happen.

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8. The NAC recommends seeking more clarity about who the proposal will help?

9. The NAC recommends more clarity about whether there is currently corporate engagement.

Project 5: Improving Black Carbon Emissions Inventory Data for Residential Wood

Combustion

1. The budget seems high for a survey.

2. The trilateral aspect of this project is not clear.

3. The project is very ambitious in terms of timelines and outcomes given all the survey science
that is involved.

4. Who is being surveyed is not clear. If the survey is to be adapted for the specific context of
the select cities, how will the issues related to response rates be addressed, for example how
will trust be built with potential respondents so that they complete the survey? How will
these strategies to build trust vary by region? Further, how will the survey design address
likely resistance to responding based on concerns "big brother" is "tracking" my personal
wood burning practices.

5. The proposal does not make clear the range of wood burning practices to be covered by the
survey; the range of wood burning behaviors is wide - burning wood for fun to burning wood
for food preparation.

6. No reference is made to existing resources or references to existing models of potential use.

Project 6: Supporting Science for Continental Conservation of the Monarch Butterfly

1. The proposal provides the opportunity to be a door opener for collaboration - build the
foundation for the agencies in each country assessing risk to communicate and coordinate.

2. The proposal does not make clear the science gap it is trying to fill. One focus might be
trying to find out what is happening to habitat between the wintering grounds in Michoacan,
Mexico, and the Rio Grande.

3. Could the CEC play the role as a unifying coordinator here? Is this an opportunity that is not
leveraged in this proposal?

4. The proposal should seek to get everyone on the same page regarding where the gaps are in
field monitoring and in building a strategy to work together to fill them.

5. Research needs to be grounded in, or situated in, the larger context to make sense. This is
such a crowded field - how is what is proposed here related to the field? How is it additive
and novel? Further, current research strategy is focused on national level governments and
the trilateral commission, doesn't recognize work of others.

6. The proposal seems to miss an opportunity to link to the larger environmental factors and
cycles and other policy issues such as food security.

7. The proposal should include a communication strategy to make the value proposition of the
work clear vis a vis the crowded field.

8. The proposal appears to be missing an opportunity to leverage the shared interest with large
international partners such as the WWF.

9. An annual multi-stakeholder convening is a strength of the proposal and should include
industry stakeholders to partner in knowledge sharing, science and assessment.

9. Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), Midwest Association of
Fish and Wildlife Agencies,, Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, NatureServe,
Student Conservation Association (SCA), Boy/Girl Scouts

• US Government: National Phenology Network (USGS)

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• Private Industry: Agricultural companies (e.g., ConAgra), chemical companies (e.g.,
DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science), agricultural coops

10. Potential co-sponsors or funders: US Department of Agriculture, US Fish and Wildlife
Service, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), chemical and agricultural
companies

Project 7: Helping North American communities respond to extreme heat events (Phase II)

- Scaling up syndromic surveillance systems.

1) Link this proposal more clearly to "criteria pollutants" such as ozone, or link to existing
monitoring networks. This will strengthen the impact and sustainability.

2) The areas you plan on identifying as "at risk" are unclear. The criteria to be used in this
selection process are unclear.

3) Be clear this a health issue - this will expand the opportunity for partnership and for future
long term financing opportunities.

4) The proposal seems to be missing an opportunity for greater youth engagement in this
project.

5) The proposal seems to be missing an opportunity for greater engagement of TEK in this
project. For example, Tribal Health Agencies.

6) Expand and clarify/make coherent your partnership strategy. How will you effectively
coordinate among all the levels and branches of government with a formal responsibility for
response in localized extreme weather events?

7) Provide evidence of the success of such systems in other places; tell us who has done this
well and why, and what you have learned from them that you will apply in this project.

8) Clarify the value proposition in terms of public health and vulnerable communities.

9) The trilateral aspect of this proposal is not clear. The focus appears to be on how to create
networks that enable local coordination using data from similar technologies deployed in
three cities. The proposal appears to have more of a comparative case study character.

10) Climate change as a triggering event here is a powerful message - it is underutilized in
making a case for the reason for, and potential value of, this project.

11) Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: Is there a group that would have connections to Native American healers?

• Academic: Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (Northern Arizona
University)

• Local/Tribal Government: Tribal Health Agencies

Project 8: Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as Tools for Promoting Ocean Health

1. The budget seems low for the work required.

2. The project is very ambitious in terms of timelines and outcomes (tool development is
expensive). What existing tools would form the foundation of the toolkit to keep expenses
down?

3. Are there a set of adaptation principles that could be applied based on the type of ecosystem,
to simplify the underlying framework for the toolkit? - for example, kelp, coral.

4. How robust can the tool kit be if trying to be all things to all people? In particular because the
budget is small. Can a modular approach be used?

5. The deliverables are not clear.

6. The target audience for the toolkit is not clear.

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7. The project appears to be focused on improved management rather than climate focused
change. Agile or adaptive management focused.

8. The proposal does not make it clear how it is linked to other efforts happening outside the
MPA that might amplify or negate these efforts.

9. TEK connection should be much more - integration outlined in the proposal seems
superficial and should be strengthened.

10. Specifics in this proposal might be a model for future proposals.

11. Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: Pew Charitable Trusts, The Nature Conservancy, NatureServe, Compass (for
communications plan), National Wildlife Federation

• Tribal Fisheries Agencies

• US Government: NOAA

• Private Industry: Local/State tourism agencies, chambers of commerce, fishing
companies

12. Potential co-sponsors or funders: Pew Charitable Trusts, The Nature Conservancy, Packard
Foundation

Project 9: Implementation of North American Action Plans to boost the sustainable, legal
and traceable production and trade of CITES Appendix II priority sharks, turtles,
tarantulas and timber

1. Good trilateral project.

2. References to key partners are limited - yet we know all states have lead CITES agencies.

3. Links to species specific groups - academic groups could be key partners - more
acknowledgements to key partners is recommended.

4. The project is too ambitions - too much money, too many deliverables, too little time.

5. For example, seems to be gathering knowledge then executing - little time appears to be
provided for reflection and testing. If the activities are carried out in linear fashion - not clear
how it can all be done - if carried out in parallel - maybe possible. Proposal needs more
information on sequencing and iteration of these critical processes in this proposal.

6. Make the elements of the action plan more clear. Make it easier to review to provide
feedback.

7. Make clear how this builds on previous work.

8. Why these species?

9. How does cites relate to work on monarch butterflies?

10. What is the value vis a vis the requirement for action plans?

11. Important partnerships that should be emphasized, and more clearly defined:

• Nonprofit: Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), HerpNet, NatureServe,
zoos and aquariums, IUCN North America, Wildlife Society, Native American Wildlife
Society

• State/Local Government: State fish and wildlife agencies, Tribal fish and wildlife
agencies

• Private Industry: Associations of collectors

Project 10: North American TEK Atlas/Inventory and case studies on best practices in
integrating TEK in decision making in the three countries.

1. The case study is missing from the measurable results column.

2. Replication strategy needs attention

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3. How will conflicts/perspective differences between TEK and western science be resolved?
How will gaps be bridged to ensure we get the best of both?

4. Is the project necessary?

5. The case study text is too thin - no description of what case and why the focus is selected.
How will the case studies be selected? Who will be involved?

6. Be more clear on the operating context - Canada is good at integrating TEK, less so the US -
less so even - Mexico. How will this variability be accounted for in efforts to integrate TEK
into government decision making in a single project?

7. Not much discussion or view of social media content. Would like to see more discussion of
how the data points will be verified - e.g. data quality. Fitness for use, for example.

8. IP How will contributions to the collection be attributed to the different experts - how will IP
be protected?

Project 11: Reducing Emissions from Goods Movement via Maritime Transportation in

North America (Phase III)

1. Public health focus strengthens the proposal. This proposal provides variety and balance to
the portfolio.

2. The proposal makes clear the problem of patchwork efforts - they are trying to fix or link the
disparate efforts.

3. All eyes are on this industry and measuring emissions. Advice from NAC - Link to, and be
aware of, IMO efforts.

4. Expand Focus to ship emissions in ports. Is this included? If not, why not? This is a big piece
of regulation in the US.

5. Does the project look at loading and unloading- the movement of trucks in and out of ports?

6. The proposal needs more clarity on deliverables - and the benefit of each - the approval
processes and outcomes.

7. The proposal connects to the administration's agenda - more than any of the proposals.
Emphasize the connections here in the interest of sustainability.

8. Build in outreach around the science of emissions and emissions testing. New technologies to
reduce emissions in the full ecosystem of ports, goods movement including ship based
transport.

Project 12: Quantifying Methane and Black Carbon Emissions from Flaring the Oil and

Gas Industry

1. Is this viable given US requirement to measure methane emissions on federal lands has been
reversed?

2. Does this project shift the pressure to private firms?

3. Who will pay for step 2? This is important as the incentive is in step 2.

4. Trilateral aspect of this proposal seems weaker than others. TEK and youth aspects of this are
also weak.

5. This project could be improved through an emphasis on how this project, if successful, will
contribute to competitiveness.

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National Advisory Committee (NAC)

To the U.S. Representative to the
Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)

Advice 2017-3 (Meeting - March 28-29, 2017)

On the CEC Project Proposal Process

In addition to the summary comments above, we offer several suggestions regarding improving

the project proposal process going forward.

1. Encourage proposers to develop their proposals in terms of return on investment and
partnering. Adopting a frame of reference that draws attention consistently to these two
ideas is recommended for proposers. Being able to express the value of the project clearly
and consistently, in measurable ways, and to specify related partners and networks will
contribute to the likelihood that a project can secure the resources and partners needed to be
sustainable and scalable, and to be of interest in terms of replication to new locations and
other contexts.

2. Map the proposal sections to the evaluation criteria. The NAC observed that our ability to
make judgements about the extent to which the projects involved TEK and youth related
activities was facilitated because there was a specific question asked about these criteria.
Making similar judgements about sustainability, scalability and replicability, was much more
difficult as no direct questions about these criteria were asked so we, as reviewers, had to
infer from what was provided.

3. The proposal summary asked the proposers to list partners. The lists provided were in some
cases short and general, in others long. The members of the NAC found it difficult to
determine what the lists represented in terms of valuable resources to the projects. We found
it difficult to determine if the projects proposed included activities necessary to leverage the
project itself to build out partnership networks. Such leveraging activity is considered, by the
NAC, to be critical to achieving success in achieving the outcome of the project, and in terms
of its long terms sustainability, scalability and replicability.

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