The nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced profound change since the tumultuous decades of the 1970s and 1980s. These changes include the return of formal democracy, the implementation of economic reform and stabilization, the embrace of free trade, and an ever-growing awareness of the need for environmental regulation, protection, and remediation. This new concern for the environment reflects not only the dramatic political changes the region has experienced over the past fifteen years but, more significantly, societal change and the structural economic transformation of many of the nations into open, export-oriented economies.