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A Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is being negotiated, and aims to form a trading bloc stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego by the year 2005 as part of a larger integration agenda. Parallel to this undertaking, environment ministers of the Americas met for the first time at Montreal in 2001 to discuss hemispheric cooperation on ecological issues. Countries of the Americas are parties to sub-regional environmental cooperation arrangements, members of the UNEP Forum of LAC Environment Ministers and parties to Multilateral Environmental Accords (MEAs) which use trade measures, successfully, to support environmental goals.

How can new trade policies support environmental protection in the Americas? Can the integration process lead to a new, strengthened ecological cooperation agenda? If so, what are the key problems that require solutions, which instruments already exist and what are the prospects for a new regime, or even a network of regimes?

Ecological Rules and Sustainability in the Americas is the second in a series meant to strengthen hemispheric information, capacity and analysis on trade and sustainability issues. The study examines existing and potential trade, environmental and social regimes in the Americas. This research summary, by applying IISD's Winnipeg Principles on trade and sustainable development to a network of over 272 relevant global, hemispheric, sub-regional and bilateral environmental instruments, provides recommendations for new ecological cooperation agendas in the Americas.