The Content of a WTO Climate Waiver
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CIGI Papers No. 204 — December 2018 The Content of a WTO Climate Waiver James Bacchus CIGI Papers No. 204 — December 2018 The Content of a WTO Climate Waiver James Bacchus CIGI Masthead Executive President Rohinton P. Medhora Deputy Director, International Intellectual Property Law and Innovation Bassem Awad Chief Financial Officer and Director of Operations Shelley Boettger Director of the Global Economy Program Robert Fay Director of the International Law Research Program Oonagh Fitzgerald Director of the Global Security & Politics Program Fen Osler Hampson Director of Human Resources Laura Kacur Deputy Director, International Environmental Law Silvia Maciunas Deputy Director, International Economic Law Hugo Perezcano Díaz Director, Evaluation and Partnerships Erica Shaw Managing Director and General Counsel Aaron Shull Director of Communications and Digital Media Spencer Tripp Publications Publisher Carol Bonnett Senior Publications Editor Jennifer Goyder Senior Publications Editor Nicole Langlois Publications Editor Susan Bubak Publications Editor Patricia Holmes Publications Editor Lynn Schellenberg Graphic Designer Melodie Wakefield For publications enquiries, please contact [email protected]. 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Centre for International Governance Innovation and CIGI are registered trademarks. 67 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 6C2 www.cigionline.org Table of Contents vi About the Author vi About the Program 1 Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 The Legal Characteristics of a WTO Waiver 4 The Content of a Climate Waiver 14 A Sustainable Energy Trade Agreement 15 Conclusion 16 About CIGI 16 À propos du CIGI About the Author About the Program James Bacchus is a senior fellow with CIGI’s The International Law Research Program (ILRP) International Law Research Program, as well as the at CIGI is an integrated multidisciplinary Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs research program that provides leading and director of the Center for Global Economic and academics, government and private sector Environmental Opportunity at the University of legal experts, as well as students from Canada Central Florida. He was a founding judge and was and abroad, with the opportunity to contribute twice chairman and chief judge of the Appellate to advancements in international law. Body at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He served as a member of the United States Congress The ILRP strives to be the world’s leading and as an international trade negotiator for the international law research program, with United States. Currently, he is senior counsellor to recognized impact on how international law the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable is brought to bear on significant global issues. Development in Switzerland and an adjunct The program’s mission is to connect knowledge, scholar of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. policy and practice to build the international law He served on the high-level advisory panel to the framework — the globalized rule of law — to Conference of the Parties of the United Nations support international governance of the future. Framework Convention on Climate Change, chairs Its founding belief is that better international the Global Commission on Trade and Investment governance, including a strengthened international Policy of the International Chamber of Commerce, law framework, can improve the lives of people and chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global everywhere, increase prosperity, ensure global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability. sustainability, address inequality, safeguard For more than 14 years, he chaired the global human rights and promote a more secure world. practice of a law firm that is the largest in the The ILRP focuses on the areas of international United States and one of the largest in the world. law that are most important to global innovation, He is the author of the books Trade and Freedom prosperity and sustainability: international (Cameron May, 2004) and The Willing World: economic law, international intellectual property Shaping and Sharing a Sustainable Global Prosperity law and international environmental law. In its (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He is a frequent research, the ILRP is attentive to the emerging writer in leading publications and a frequent interactions among international and transnational speaker on prominent platforms worldwide. law, Indigenous law and constitutional law. vi CIGI Papers No. 204 — December 2018 • James Bacchus Executive Summary Introduction Neither the trade regime nor the climate regime The scorching summer of 2018 offered heated has so far displayed any willingness to confront testimony that climate change is no longer the coming clash between climate ambitions and approaching; it is already here. In addition to trade rules. To minimize the economic and political record temperatures in many places, extreme risks of such a collision, the members of the World weather events influenced by the global heat — Trade Organization (WTO) should adopt a WTO heavier rainstorms, more powerful hurricanes climate waiver. To further carbon pricing and to and longer droughts — are increasingly facilitate the necessary green transition in the common throughout the world. One research global economy, the core of a WTO climate waiver meteorologist at the National Oceanic and should be a waiver from the applicable trade rules Atmospheric Administration in the United States for national measures that: discriminate on the was moved to say of the rising heat, “The old basis of carbon and other greenhouse gases used or records belong to a world that no longer exists.”1 emitted in making a product; fit the definition of a climate response measure as defined by the United At the same time, the long hot summer of 2018 Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change saw a further unravelling of more than 70 years (UNFCCC); and do not discriminate in a manner of international cooperation in constructing that constitutes a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable and maintaining a rules-based multilateral discrimination or a disguised restriction on trading system that provides a legal framework international trade. A WTO climate waiver should for lowering the barriers to international trade also include support for trade restrictions by and increasing the global flow of trade and the carbon markets and climate clubs, trade disciplines global gains from trade. As the United States on fossil fuel subsidies, and green subsidies that descended into a destructive protectionism support innovative outcomes rather than particular and departed from adherence to global trade technologies. Along with a climate waiver, WTO rules — rules it had helped create and to which members should also confirm that carbon taxes it had long agreed — other trading countries qualify as border tax adjustments under trade rules. struggled to preserve the WTO in the face of a frenetic American opposition to multilateralism. The adoption of a WTO climate waiver is a central and critical part of the overall reimagining of Meanwhile, the world edged ever closer to a international trade law that is needed to fulfill collision between the global rules frameworks of the stated WTO goal of engaging in trade and the two separate international institutions that other economic endeavours consistently with were created and entrusted with supporting trade the objectives of sustainable development. and addressing climate change. World leaders have given scant attention to this looming collision. Yet the complex connections between trade and climate change must be addressed by the WTO and the UN climate regime, ideally together. If those connections are not addressed, then a clash will soon occur in which the world’s simultaneous endeavours to continue to trade within the global framework of WTO rules, and to progress in the fight against climate change through the framework established by the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, will both be put at significant risk. Neither of these two international regimes has considered the likely consequences of the trade restrictions that will surely be a part of many 1 Joel Achenbach & Angela Fritz, “Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer”, Washington Post (26 July 2018). The Content of a WTO Climate Waiver 1 national measures that will be enacted to address indispensable basic rules of non-discrimination that climate change. Yet these consequences will soon underpin the WTO-based world trading system. 4 become real. Unavoidably, much climate action will restrict or otherwise affect trade. “Trade- To enact a WTO climate waiver, the related elements feature prominently in climate following conditions are necessary: contributions under the Paris Agreement,” and, by → the separate