The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will have a range of indirect and secondary environmental impacts in the forest sectors of member countries. We report on a framework for assessing these impacts, developed through a Delphi survey of experts.

The proposed framework must identify both positive and negative impacts on forests and on the ecosystem services provided by forests. These impacts will generally be indirect and secondary and therefore challenging to measure. We compare possible methodologies and frameworks, integrating and even proposing new guidelines for the detailed country by country and industry by industry analyses generally recognized as critical for understanding NAFTA's impacts. The Delphi process facilitates expert input on the suitability of frameworks and especially of the indicators to use for assessing impacts. The resulting framework considers organizational factors that are important for environmental assessment. This would serve as strategic guidance to:

• Set the objectives of the assessment and level of detail
• Recognize the environment to assess
• Identify and characterize its elements
• Describe their actual status
• Identify the potential sources of impacts
• Select indicators to recognize and quantify important effects on the environment
• Determine their capacity to stand changes without compromising their sustainability

Effects of NAFTA are expected to differ across countries and also across industries, even within the forestry sector. If more countries join NAFTA or enter similar agreements in the future, a general framework for assessing impacts in and of each country will be of great practical value.