The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) conducts policy and research work on environmentally preferable goods and services (EPGS) in eleven different activities. One specific activity is to “Identify changes/trends in trade in green goods and services in the NAFTA region.” Lacking any definitive quantification of trade in EPGS, and also lacking any established or consistently used industry codes that result in ongoing government statistics on environmental trade, in 2003 CEC commissioned a study to provide a definition and quantification of trade in EPGS in the NAFTA region. CEC selected Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI), a market research firm dedicated to the environmental industry since 1988, to conduct this research and present a quantification of environmental trade in the NAFTA region.

It was presumed that the passage of NAFTA would stimulate considerable growth in markets for environmental goods and services in Mexico, and the rapid development of an environmental industry in Mexico. This paper quantifies the growth and evolution of environmental market in Mexico since 1995, and characterizes the contribution of imports and Mexico’s own environmental industry. NAFTA has not brought proportionally more pollution to Mexico as many feared, but it is gradually bringing higher standards of environmental performance due to the influx of multinational firms operating under their own guidelines. The challenge is to turn these standards into the norm rather than the exception, and working with Mexican authorities to apply similar standards to their environmental infrastructure.

Summary presentation from OECD-funded project to identify and profile examples of monitoring & compliance programs involving imports of environmental goods & services.