Fusing Economic and Environmental Policy: The Need for Framework Laws in the United States and Argentina

In response to the accords reached at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and to international economic pressures, the Argentine Constitution was amended in 1994. Article 41 of the Argentine Constitution now provides the people of Argentina with a right to a healthy environment. It adopts the international definition of sustainable development as a means of protecting this environmental right, noting that the country's productive activities should satisfy present needs without compromising the needs of future generations. Resource use and conservation - production and protection - are fused in this new constitutional prescription.

The Argentine congress is now struggling to define a national strategy for achieving sustainable development. What remains to be done, in Argentina, as in the U.S., is to find the proper balance of authority and responsibility among national, provincial and local governments, as well as between the private and public sectors, to implement these guarantees. What legislation the Federal Congress in Argentina will pass, and how the relationship between sectors and among these levels of government will evolve, is the drama that is unfolding in this South American country.