11/23/2024

The Future of Climate Action Is Trade Policy

Trade behaviors are already impacting climate change

The United Nations climate conference, now in its final days in Baku, has exacerbated long-standing tensions between countries on the path to decarbonize the global economy. The role of fossil fuels, the financial obligations of wealthier countries and geopolitical tensions have all contributed to a well-founded fear that this year's talks—known as COP29—could collapse.

These hiccups are just the beginning. A COP29 delegate who blinked amid the chaos of this year’s talks might have missed the emerging vector for international climate collaboration and conflict: the linkage of climate and trade policy. In Baku, a dispute over tariff-like policies that target carbon tripped up negotiators before the conference officially started—and the rapidly evolving trade-climate nexus has hung over the talks ever since. With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump poised to take a hammer to the status quo, trade policy is destined to play an even larger role in climate discussions in the years to come.

These issues are so controversial that many in the international climate policy world are quick to sweep them under the rug lest discussing them disrupts progress in other areas. But such an approach is short sighted: the climate-trade nexus is an important part of the future of climate action. “There has to be a discussion of the rules, eventually, that will address how countries engage in trade and its impact on climate,” Pamela Coke-Hamilton, a trade attorney who serves as the head of the International Trade Centre, told me at the summit. “Hiding from it is not going to resolve anything.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.