CTG has released a new research report, titled Mitigating Cross-Border Air Pollution: The Power of a Network. Deputy director Anthony Cresswell presented the findings at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Air Policy Forum in Monterrey, Mexico.

The report analyzes the efforts of a multi-organizational network of government and private sector participants along the US-Mexican border. The network, known as the JAC (Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality in the Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua/El Paso, Texas/Doña Ana County, New Mexico Air Basin), has been highly successful in binational pollution mitigation activities and provides important lessons for building similar collaborative networks among a diverse set of stakeholders.

These lessons include a set of key network requirements:

• legitimacy
• committed, capable, and diverse human resources
• incentives for organizational investment
• social capital
• effective organizational structure and legal framework
• sufficient financial and analytical resources
• integration with existing organizations and project
• strong and clearly defined binational identity
• The JAC case study was conducted at the request of the U.S. and Mexican co-chairs of the Air Policy Forum by a team of researchers from the Center for Technology in Government and California State University Dominguez Hills. As part of the study, the research team traveled to El Paso, Texas and La Cruces, New Mexico to meet with and interview U.S. and Mexican members of the JAC.

The Air Policy Forum is part of the US-Mexico Environmental Program (Border 2012), a collaboration between the United States and Mexico to improve the environment and protect the health of the nearly 12 million people living along the border. The bi-national program focuses on cleaning the air, providing safe drinking water, reducing the risk of exposure to hazardous waste, and ensuring emergency preparedness along the U.S.-Mexico border.