What can trade regulation contribute towards ameliorating the GHG emissions and reducing their concentrations in the atmosphere? This collection of essays analyses options for climate-change mitigation through the lens of the trade lawyer. By examining international law, and in particular the relevant WTO agreements, the authors address the areas of potential conflict between international trade law and international law on climate mitigation and, where possible, suggest ways to strengthen mutual supportiveness between the two regimes. They do so taking into account the drivers of human-induced climate change in energy markets and of consumption.
Drawing on the expertise of leading voices, this book takes stock of key challenges in addressing climate change mitigation, serving as a reference tool for understanding the interface between international trade and climate and shedding light on key issues including global commons, border tax adjustment, subsidies and biofuels.
While trade exacerbates climate change, it is also a central part of the solution because it has the potential to enhance mitigation and adaptation. This timely report explores the different ways in which trade and climate change intersect. Trade contributes to the emissions that cause global warming and is itself also affected by climate change through changing comparative advantages. The report also confronts several myths concerning trade and climate change. The Trade and Climate Change Nexus: The Urgency and Opportunities for Developing Countries focuses on the impacts of, and adjustments to, climate change in developing countries and on how future trade opportunities will be affected by both the changing climate and the policy responses to address it. The report discusses how trade can provide the goods and services that drive mitigation and adaptation. It also addresses how climate change creates immense challenges for developing countries, but also new opportunities to promote trade diversification in the transition to a low-carbon world. Suitable trade and environmental policies can offer effective economic incentives to attain both sustainable growth and poverty reduction.
Climate change remains a global challenge requiring international collaborative action. Another area where countries have successfully committed to a long-term multilateral resolution is the liberalization of international trade. Integration into the world economy has proven a powerful means for countries to promote economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. The broad objectives of the betterment of current and future human welfare are shared by both global trade and climate regimes. Yet both climate and trade agendas have evolved largely independently through the years, despite their mutually supporting objectives. Since global emission goals and global trade objectives are shared policy objectives of most countries, and nearly all of the World Bank's clients, it makes sense to consider the two sets of objectives together. This book is one of the first comprehensive attempts to look at the synergies between climate change and trade objectives from economic, legal, and institutional perspectives. It addresses an important policy question - how changes in trade policies and international cooperation on trade policies can help address global environmental spillovers, especially GHG emissions, and what the (potential) effects of (national) environmental policies that are aimed at global environmental problems might be for trade and investment. It explores opportunities for aligning development and energy policies in such a way that they could stimulate production, trade, and investment in cleaner technology options.
The OECD Principles for Integrity in Public Procurement are a ground-breaking instrument that promotes good governance in the entire procurement cycle, from needs assessment to contract management.
For a long time, the GATT led a life of its own as a self-contained regime. The evolution from tariff to non-tariff barriers brought about increasing overlaps with other regulatory areas. WTO rules increasingly interface with other areas of law and policy, including environmental protection, agricultural policies, labour standards, investment, human rights and regional integration. Against this backdrop, this book examines fragmentation in international trade regulation across a wide array of regulatory fields. To this end, it uses a conceptually coherent theoretical framework which is based on the effort to bring about greater coherence among different policy goals and fields, and thus to embed the multilateral trading system within the broader framework of international economics, law and relations. It will appeal to those interested in a forward-looking discussion of the most pressing issues of the international trade agenda.
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Mitigation requires a large-scale transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper provides an overview of the rapidly growing literature on the role of macroeconomic and financial policy tools in enabling this transition. The literature provides a menu of policy tools for mitigation. A key conclusion is that fiscal tools are first in line and central, but can and may need to be complemented by financial and monetary policy instruments. Some tools and policies raise unanswered questions about policy tool assignment and mandates, which we describe. The literature is scarce, however, on the most effective policy mix and the role of mitigation tools and goals in the overall policy framework.
This book investigates the strategic use of public procurement as a way to establish “buying green” as a common practice – not only in the EU, but all over the world. However, imposing environmental requirements may affect the conditions of competition between suppliers, especially between local and foreign ones. This is particularly relevant for signatory states to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), a plurilateral WTO agreement that aims at liberalizing public procurement markets. So how can these countries strike a balance between trade concerns and using the environmental potential of public procurement? What scope does the GPA 2012 leave for environmental criteria and how are signatory states making use of it? The need for answers to these questions is becoming even more pressing with the increasing use of green public procurement (GPP). This book discusses approaches to finding legal solutions to this question, using a multilayered approach to do so: In a first step, an analysis of the pertinent GPA provisions serves to delineate the scope for GPP under WTO law. In a second step, an evaluation of the implementation of the respective provision at the regional and national level by the EU and Switzerland helps reveal the impact of the GPA on its signatory states. While the book chiefly focuses on the legal framework for GPP, it also takes into account the latest developments in jurisprudence and policy initiatives. It concludes by proposing practical solutions regarding the specific design of GPP policies and measures in compliance with the GPA. The comparative approach applied in the book, focusing on the implementation of the WTO/GPA by two selected signatories, makes it an informative and insightful resource for practitioners, policymakers and legal scholars from all GPA signatory countries, extending its relevance beyond the selected examples (the EU and Switzerland).
This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SRREN) assesses the potential role of renewable energy in the mitigation of climate change. It covers the six most important renewable energy sources - bioenergy, solar, geothermal, hydropower, ocean and wind energy - as well as their integration into present and future energy systems. It considers the environmental and social consequences associated with the deployment of these technologies, and presents strategies to overcome technical as well as non-technical obstacles to their application and diffusion. SRREN brings a broad spectrum of technology-specific experts together with scientists studying energy systems as a whole. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, it presents an impartial assessment of the current state of knowledge: it is policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. SRREN is an invaluable assessment of the potential role of renewable energy for the mitigation of climate change for policymakers, the private sector, and academic researchers.
