The importance of the Jordan-U.S. Trade Agreement (FTA) is clear. This agreement will serve as an integral component of Jordan’s economic vision of the future. The agreement, has a set of unique features pertaining to environment. It is worth mentioning, however that no financial resources have been yet allocated by the USA for the implementation of Environmental provisions of the FTA!

Following are the main environmental features:

1- The first trade agreement signed by Jordan that contains environmental provisions.

2- The first Free trade agreement signed by the US after issuing the executive order 1314 for environmental review of trade agreement.

3- Only the second free trade agreement signed by the US and has environmental provisions in its body ( the first was NAFTA).

The inclusion of environmental provisions and principles in the text of the agreement is consistent with a global trend in integrating trade and environment issues to safeguard the option of sustainable development. It is expected hat future trade agreements must have environmental provisions, or will be subject to skeptical public scrutiny upon negotiation and implementation.

The language in Article 5 of the Agreement was written in a general and flexible way to ensure smooth and effective implementation by both parties and maximizing opportunities presented by the agreement for the Jordanian economy as well.

The four key principles that energize this agreement are as follows:

q Ensuring sustainable development.

q Maintaining high level of environmental protection.

q Not lowering environmental standards to promote trade; and

q Effective enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.

The most important points that can be derived out of the text of Article 5 are the following:

q Domestic environmental standards and regulations should not be lowered or relaxed in order to attract investors or encouraging trade. This will require continuous monitoring and effective enforcement of environment laws and shall be a strong tool to monitor any goods or investments that do not comply with Jordanian environmental standards. The text leaves a room to further strict the laws and modify any standards that are proven to be weak.

q A party should not fail to effectively enforce its environmental laws through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction: The text here defines the incidents that can be challenged as a failure in effective enforcement as “ sustained and recurring”. This means that rapid and effective monitoring should be applied to developmental facilities and activities and remediation action should be taken to prevent individual incidents from turning into a continuous failure.

Most recently, Jordan and the USA have conducted a joint forum on environmental technical cooperation. The event was held on Sep 14^th, 2004 and resulted in a plan of action that included the following provisions:

Cooperation over the coming years should focus on implementing a strategic vision and plan of for the Jordanian Ministry of Environment, and promoting sustainable economic growth and development.
The joint forum also noted the Jordanian Ministry of Environment's desire to develop and implement policies and programs that draw on the natural synergies between economic development and environmental protection, harnessing market forces to protect the environment while bringing economic benefits.
To this end, the U.S.Government will provide advisory support in developing growth-oriented policies on environmental economics and assistance in strengthening the Jordanian Ministry of Environment's capacity for setting, implementing and ensuring compliance with environmental standards