To Dystopia and Beyond: The WTO in a Warming Megaregional World

Abstract

The effects of accelerating climate change will have a destabilizing impact on trade negotiations, particularly for the worst-affected developing countries. The effects of the climate crisis will make it more difficult to make concessions in crucial areas, such as agriculture and intellectual property rights, due to the effects of the climate crisis on agricultural yields and the increased need for technology to adapt to a warming climate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and killer heat waves will provoke mass migration, with impacts on domestic politics that makes trade concessions more difficult. In this context, multilateral trade negotiations are unlikely to advance in a significant way and megaregional trade agreements will become increasingly difficult to join. The result will be a warming world that is divided between those included in and those excluded from the megaregional trade regime. This will also hamper efforts to slow and to adapt to the climate crisis, due to the key role that international trade plays in addressing both.

WTO Chair Professor, Department of Law of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).