FROM THE EDITOR.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: Brief Article - Editorial

The Third Summit of the Americas, a three-day meeting of the presidents and prime ministers of the American nations, will be held in April in the Canadian city of Quebec. The heads of state and government who gather there will consider a wide range of issues that affect the lives of the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere. In addition to a greater defense of human rights and the promotion of representative democracy, they will pay particular attention to the possibilities of completing a free trade agreement for all the Americas by 2005 and the recently established "multilateral evaluation mechanism," the MEM, which was created to measure more evenhandedly the efforts of the OAS nations to combat the use and trade of illicit drugs in the Hemisphere. The host country, Canada, has also proposed discussing the question of "human security." This concept, as elaborated by Canada's former foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, establishes as the primary responsibility of national governments, not only the protection from violence, but also the well-being and guarantee of a reasonable quality of life for all citizens.

In this issue, we examine several communities that are uniquely addressing their own concerns of well-being and quality of life. In Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico, an unprecedented coalition of Mexican, North American, and European environmentalists has successfully united to protect the birthing grounds of the gray whale. And in another story of the sea, off the...