Climate change and trade policy: from legal complications to time factor

• Pages: 258-271
• Published date: 06 September 2013
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JITLP-02-2013-0003
• Date: 06 September 2013
• Author: Khalid Ahmed,Wei Long
• Subject Matter: Economics

Climate change and trade policy:

from legal complications

to time factor

Khalid Ahmed and Wei Long

Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal complications prevail towards the

architecture of mutual policy design between trade and climate change regimes. The recent literature on

this topic is mainly focused on commons and has signif‌icantly ignored the existing regulatory

constraints between both the regimes. Therefore, in this study relevant WTO and environmental laws

are critically examined in order to bring another side of literally work on trade-climate policy

framework. Moreover, the time factor, role of developing countries and two approaches are also

discussed that are important constituents to be considered during ongoing climate change multilateral

talks.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper has six parts in total. Part one comprises of

“Introduction”, part two gives “Overview of relevant WTO and climate change regulations”, part three

describes “Antithesis of WTO and climate change rules” and explains the differences that both

regimes posses in the basics of their nature, part four enumerates that how to galvanize the anticipated

disputes among both the regimes, part f‌ive is focused on the participation of developing countries and

their possible reservations towards climate policy and, part six gives some concluding remarks.

Findings – This study found four major points of caution while architecting climate change policy.

First, the climate change policy gives excuse to certain economies to protect their domestic industry,

which is supposedly the violation of WTO rules. Second, the disputes arise at WTO platform from the

climate friendly trade policies would be a new inconvincible challenge. Third, the GATT article XX

(general exceptions) and agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures (ASCM) are still not

clearly def‌ined under climate change regime. Fourth, the position of least developed countries (LDCs),

there is no action plan as these countries are the most affected due to possible stringent trade-climate

policies.

Research limitations/implications – This research posses potential policy implication for both

governments and international organizations, and provides new direction to trade and climate change

researchers. It opens the way to critically examine the legal issues addressed in this paper which

subsequently help both trade climate change regimes to overcome such regulatory differences with

mutual consensus.

Practical implications – As policy implication this study suggests that what has been achieved

during last two decades over climate change issue, and how long would it take to achieve the

reasonable targets? In-fact, the past work has succeeded to address the climate change as the global

issue and it needs to be solved jointly but there is still a long way to make potential progress in order to

architect the comprehensive policy and designing of multilateral agreements. It needs more time to

constitute a climate change regime free from individual countries’ political and economical interests

and consensus amongst all major countries and group.

Originality/value – Most the current literature only focuses common options between trade and

climate change policy regimes and signif‌icantly ignores the potential legal constraints. In this regards,

this study f‌ills existing gap in trade and climate change policy constraints and gives another new

direction for policy makers.

Keywords Climate change,Developing countries, WTO trade-law

Paper type Research paper

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-0024.htm

Journal of International Trade Law

and Policy

Vol. 12 No. 3, 2013

pp. 258-271

qEmerald Group Publishing Limited

1477-0024

DOI 10.1108/JITLP-02-2013-0003

JITLP

12,3

258