Tracey Epps and Andrew Green, Reconciling Trade and Climate: How the WTO Can Help Address Climate Change

Abstract

This important book deals with the relationship between world trade law and climate change policy. It takes a different perspective than the majority of publications in the field. While the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to the extent that they support continuing liberalisation and generally unrestricted international trade, have come to be seen as a central part of the problem, Epps and Green argue that the objectives of mitigating climate change on the one hand and deterring protectionism on the other do not necessarily conflict with each other. On the contrary, their hypothesis is that synergies exist between these goals, and, through the manner where they reinforce each other, that they have potential to increase social welfare. The authors thus assess the potential of international trade law as a tool for addressing the challenges of climate change. In light of this, the WTO is not considered as the “bad guy” in international relations, whose regime prevents States from implementing trade-related measures in order to be able to achieve the ultimate aim of safeguarding that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, but rather as a key actor with regard to the fulfillment of that target. While “WTO Members have very different perceptions of what the trading system ought to do on climate change” (Pascal Lamy), the approach followed in this book may ultimately have a stronger impact on the attitude of States concerning the relationship between WTO law and the climate change regime than the somewhat fruitless repeated pleas for “greening” the WTO.