Latin America initiative for environmental technology : final program activity report -- 20 September 2000 (revised 20 November 2000)

EEC worked with USAID to create two new regional industry partnerships to reduce pollution. In Central America, EEC established the Comite Regional del Medio Ambiente para Centroamerica (CORAMA) by linking together environmental representatives from four chambers of industry and similar organizations in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Panama. EEC also forged a parallel Andean region Comite del Medio Ambiente para la Region Andina (COMARA) to bring together environmental officers from five chambers of industry in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. CORAMA and COMARA represent pioneering efforts to establish public-private projects to reduce urban and industrial pollution. EEC worked with these entities to create a work plan and initiate a dialogue that would challenge and engage them to develop workshops, conferences, working groups, business exchanges, and other activities to stimulate broad private sector participation regionally, together with U.S. environmental technology professionals. The committees have successfully promoted the pollution prevention message based on cost savings and improved performance, invited a broad cross-section of stakeholders not previously engaged, and used outreach opportunities to share information and lessons. In both cases, the partners continue to express strong interest in program continuation. COMARA has received critical ongoing support from USAID Missions, many of which wish to continue working with industry to address urban and industrial pollution concerns. In Brazil, EEC helped redirect the dialogue about water and wastewater treatment concessions. EEC proved agile in responding to the varying attitudes in Brazil about privatizing water utility services, which began with talks and culminated with a nine-module graduate level course for water and sanitation services. EEC established the Latin America Water Task Force to work with broad interests to generate discussion about improving these municipal services in Brazil. The Task Force helped further the dialogue among stakeholders regarding the future of Brazil"s wastewater treatment services and the need to respond to local interests. The desired results, including greater management efficiency and improved service delivery, were and continue to be realized. Furthermore, the course modules, to be used at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and further disseminated by the Brazilian Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, will help provide a more solid underpinning for training programs to institutionalize best practices. In Mexico, though programming was limited, EEC successfully led efforts to promote best practices in the electroplating sector through an environmental business exchange. All programs achieved key participation by Latin American and U.S. professionals, and generated high levels of in- kind contributions -- over $900,000 from EEC activities alone. Industry has proved willing and interested to learn about better production and management methods, but needs additional support to internalize the importance of environmental performance, set realistic goals, and make greater strides. Finally, since enforcement capacity remains weak, short and medium-term industrial environmental improvements in LA-IET countries are more likely to be readily achieved through public-private partnerships that promote awareness about environmental impacts and illustrate solutions and market-based incentives for preventing these impacts. In this sense, USAID has a special opportunity now to support in-country institutions and build on the LA-IET successes to consolidate the environmental achievements realized to date under this program. (Author abstract, modified)