In 1989, the Presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua established the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (Comisión Centroamericano de Ambiente y Desarrollo, or CCAD) as an intergovernmental regional institution. CCAD’s initial mandate was to develop regional harmonised environmental management systems, build capacity, enhance coordination among environmental officials, harmonise environmental laws, and strengthen national environmental authorities.
In this context, CCAD has assisted its current seven Member States (now also including Belize and Panama) to develop environmental laws. CCAD worked with States to develop various environmental laws and prepared four regional treaties on biodiversity, climate change, forestry, and regulation of the movement of hazardous waste. CCAD also prepared regional guidelines on CITES, Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), and Protected Areas.
Currently, CCAD works through regional Technical Committees with the participation of the Member States. These Technical Committees seek to promote the effective compliance, implementation, and enforcement of certain MEAs, including UNFCCC, CBD, Ramsar, Basel, etc.
CCAD provides technical support in the legislative process through its repository of Central American environmental laws and its network of regional experts. CCAD also helped to create a Regional Commission of Parliamentarians on the Environment, as well as the Mesoamerican Environmental Information System (SIAM) with national nodes and a regional node in Panama.
This exchange of information and experiences has facilitated an upward harmonisation of environmental laws in the region. While the environmental laws are not harmonised per se, they now share many common approaches.
CCAD has also helped States in the region to develop joint environmental information systems, craft common strategies to address shared problems, and design and implement joint environmental projects.
For more information, see http://www.ccad.ws/ (in Spanish) or contact Mr. Marco Gonzalez at mgonzalez@ccad.ws. For more information on SIAM, see http://servir.nsstc.nasa.gov/about.html