Recognizing the right of each Party to establish its own levels of domestic environmental protection and environmental development policies and priorities, and to adopt or modify accordingly its environmental laws and policies, each Party shall strive to ensure that its laws and policies provide for and encourage high levels of environmental protection, and shall strive to continue to improve those laws and policies.
Each Party shall adopt, maintain, and implement laws, regulations, and all other measures to fulfill its obligations under the multilateral environmental agreements listed in Annex 17.2 (“covered agreements”).
The Parties recognize that the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation
(“NAAEC”) provides that a person or organization residing or established in the territory of the United States may file a submission under that agreement with the Secretariat of the NAAEC Commission for Environmental Cooperation asserting that the United States is failing to effectively enforce its environmental laws.4 In light of the availability of that procedure, a person of the United States who considers that the United States is failing to effectively enforce its environmental laws may not file a submission under this Article. For greater certainty, a person of Panama who considers that the United States is failing to effectively enforce its environmental laws may file a submission with the secretariat.
For greater certainty, environmental law does not include any statute or regulation, or provision thereof, the primary purpose of which is managing the commercial harvest or exploitation, or subsistence or aboriginal harvesting, of natural resources.
For purposes of the definition of “environmental law,” the primary purpose of a particular statutory or regulatory provision shall be determined by reference to its primary purpose, rather than to the primary purpose of the statute or regulation of which it is part;
laws, regulations, and all other measures to fulfill its obligations under a covered agreement means a Party’s laws, regulations, and other measures at the central level of government; and
statute or regulation means: