Legal Journals

WTO Chief Urges International Climate Change Consensus and Action

By jruby

World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy last Monday called on the international community to reach a robust climate change agreement during Copenhagen Climate Conference next month.  Director-General Lamy carefully expressed preference for an international accord coming out of Copenhagen, one which the WTO would seek to help implement.  This approach, he asserted, would not only result in more effective climate change mitigation but would also relieve the WTO of the need to address the trade implications of unilateral or regional climate change efforts piecemeal.

Explicitly reinforcing his speech before a gathering of trade ministers in Bali two years ago, Lamy rejected a “trade-first, climate-second” approach for the WTO.  Instead, he asserted that the WTO would welcome a clear, consensual agreement on principles and methods for mitigating climate change coming out of Copenhagen.  Such an agreement would allow the WTO to take its cues from the expressed will of the international community and prevent the WTO from having to adjudicate disputes arising out of the fragmentary national or regional climate change mitigation that would inevitably take place in the absence of a clear Copenhagen accord.  That clarity and statement of will is necessary, he said, to combat “the single biggest challenge to civilization as we know it.”

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Full post as published by Harvard International Law Journal Digest on November 12, 2009 (boomark / email).