U.S.-Mexico border sustainability was a top priority Tuesday when nearly 60 government, businesses and academic representatives from the two countries attended a border conference in the Memorial Union.
At the conference, ASU's Office of Pan American Initiatives, the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte sought to identify new means of developing educational, environmental and socio-economic partnerships.
One partnership recommended was the creation of a "center for sustainability" focusing on a common interest, such as energy. Currently, there is no single entity working to establish such partnerships.
"I think this is a very important issue of how to build bridges," said Rodolfo Cruz Piñeiro, director of institutional cooperation at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
Part of what makes international cooperation interesting right now is the United States' heightened concerns about security and how social and environmental issues will be affected, he added.
Another of the conference's major focus areas was the environment and the need for environmental health.
"We in the environmental side need to start getting better at the financial side ... the incentives," said Rick Van Schoick, managing director of the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy.
Van Schoick also emphasized the need for extending political objectives and redefining environmental protection as a serious public health issue if progress is to be made.
Other areas of concern raised by the conference for social development were the unevenness of Mexican students' access to exchange programs in the United States and the difficulties of training people in both countries.
The day-and-a-half conference, organized by Jorge de los Santos of the Office of Pan American Initiatives, began Monday by dividing the attendees into focus groups to identify challenges to the sustainability of the border region and propose solutions, which were then presented to the conference as a whole on Tuesday.
The Office of Pan American Initiatives will publish a report of the findings and recommendations within the next few weeks and then submit the report to state governments along the U.S-Mexico border.
"I believe our states have no idea what is coming," said Tod Swanson, an associate professor of religious studies at ASU, during Tuesday's presentation of the findings.
He advocated that what the border region needs is "a workforce who is not only bilingual, but also culturally bilingual."
Reach the reporter at elias.arnold@asu.edu.
