Opening Remarks: Advancing Free Trade and Promoting Environmental Objectives Are Mutually Supportive

Indeed, the projects that we discuss over the next few days are tangible evidence that improved environmental protection and increased trade go hand in hand. At the outset, I wish to thank all of the people who have made this meeting happen – and I know that all of our teams have been working tirelessly over the past few weeks to ensure its success. In particular, I wish to thank Omar Ramirez, the Environmental Point of Contact for the Dominican Republic, for his invaluable assistance.

I am privileged to be here today in this beautiful country at this historic moment as we seek to implement the CAFTA-DR and Environmental Cooperation Agreements. And today we are making history -- for the first time, the seven CAFTA-DR Parties have come together to address the details of projects related to environmental cooperation – practical steps to increase environmental protection. Never before have parties to a trade agreement devoted resources of this magnitude to environmental cooperation. The projects we will discuss over the next few days are indeed exciting, and I am keen to hear about the bilateral and regional work you are also planning with USAID.

We have two objectives for this meeting: (1) To reach consensus on the specifics of implementing the fiscal year 2006 projects; and (2) To hear about your priorities for the future – painting the big picture for environmental cooperation generally.

We want to leave this meeting ready to implement our cooperative projects – so it will be important to agree here on the path forward for implementation. It will also be important to consider the bigger picture both to avoid duplicating efforts and to help identify further opportunities for working together and leveraging resources. Thus, we look forward to hearing from each country about:

• The bilateral work you are planning
• The regional work that you are implementing
• Your priorities for future environmental cooperation

We are also eager to describe the projects currently in the works and to have your thoughts and support as we seek to implement these projects together. In the course of the past few months, we in the United States have worked hard to develop projects that:

• meet the needs you expressed to us
• are consistent with your priorities regionally and with the ECA Work Plan
• are consistent with legal constraints on the way we can allocate funding
• reflect the priorities of our Congress, and
• will produce real, measurable environmental benefit

We believe that the suite of projects our technical agencies will describe over the next few days represent an excellent balancing of these goals – achieving it has not always been easy, but we believe we have succeeded.

We know, for example, that institutional strengthening and effective enforcement of environmental laws are high regional priorities for you – and representatives from our technical agencies will describe 12 projects geared to help meet these priorities -- we look forward to hearing your views on how best to implement them.

We know also that biodiversity conservation is also a high priority and we will describe a number of projects related to protecting and conserving biodiversity. Several projects also meet other priorities –- for example, one biodiversity-related project is geared to building capacity in enforcing resource conservation laws, while another relates to strengthening institutional capacity and increasing coordination within and among CITES and forest management authorities.

In addition, we will consider projects related to other Work Plan priorities, including market-based conservation and improving private sector environmental performance. Finally, we will discuss several projects geared to meet additional specific obligations in the Environment Chapter of the CAFTA-DR. We have an ambitious agenda before us. To succeed, we will need to work cohesively. We hope that you, the focal points for each Party, will provide crucial input, on behalf of your governments, on project implementation from both a national and regional perspective. By the end of this meeting, we hope to have a broad, shared understanding of the full scope of CAFTA-DR environmental cooperation.

We hope also to have identified synergies between bilateral and regional work, as well as areas in which we can work together and ways to improve the projects to ensure successful implementation and maximum environmental benefit for us all. Again, our goal is to leave this meeting ready to begin implementing the projects. Because we want this great cooperative effort to continue in the coming years, it will be important to demonstrate to those in all of our countries that project implementation is off to a swift start – the sooner we can begin, the better. Thank you, Under Secretary Reyna and colleagues for your support and enthusiasm.