Environmental Policy in North America : Approaches, Capacity, and the Management of Transboundary Issues

This comprehensive analysis of key issues in North American environmental policy provides an overview of how the US, Mexico, and Canada differ in their environmental management approaches and capacity levels, and how these differences play into cross-border cooperation on environmental problems. The book offers insights into transboundary cooperation both before and after NAFTA, and presents a framework for making environmental interaction more effective in the future.

The book is organized into two parts. The first, more general, section compares the national contexts for environmental management in each country—including economic conditions, sociocultural dynamics, and political decision-making frameworks— and shows how these have led to variations in policy approaches and levels of capacity. The authors argue that effective environmental governance in North America depends on the ability of transboundary institutions to address and mediate these differences. The book's second section illustrates this argument, using four case studies of environmental management in North America: biodiversity and protected areas, air pollution (smog); greenhouse gas reduction, and genetically modified crops.

Robert G. Healy is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.


Debora L. VanNijnatten is Associate Professor of Political Science and North American Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.


Marcela López-Vallejo is Professor in the School of International Relations at Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Mexico.