Legal Analysis And Responsive Thoughts Of Carbon Tariff Under Multilateral Legal Regime

Carbon tariff was claimed with the development of climate crisis, and thetheoretical mechanism of it is urging the countries to reduce the emission ofgreenhouse gas, such as carbon dioxide, by imposing trade restrictions on them. Atfirst, carbon tariff was put forward by France to warn America’s withdrawing fromthe Kyoto Protocol. Nowadays, the first emission reduction stage of the KyotoProtocol will terminate in the year of2012. And the second reduction stage wasnegotiated by the countries after being called a great many times. However, theCopenhagen Climate Conference in2009and the Cancun Climate Conference in2010which were anticipated with great expectations haven’t brought about any bindingreduction agreements. And then, carbon tariff was reclaimed by some countries andthey try to involve it into their emission reduction systems unilaterally.The emergence of carbon tariff caused complex influence to internationaleconomy and politics. Different countries held different attitudes toward it forpursuing benefits. Nowadays, America and the European Union have put in placesome trade policies relating to “carbon” in order to retrieve the declining tendency oftheir economy in the era of financial crisis and climate crisis, so as to race tocommand the height of the coming international low-carbon economy. However,China and India as well as some other developing countries are the main damagedparties under these policies and they oppose to carbon tariff firmly.However, both the American International “Reserve Allowance Program” andthe EU policy of involving aircraft industry into ETS system are interests-drivenpolicies. They couldn’t develop to international emission reduction systems, but willrestrict and distort international trade, even to lag the development of internationaltrade and hinder the progress of the global climate protection. From the angle of thedevelopment of international trade, the unilateral policies of America and EU arebarriers of international communication and cooperation, their anachronistic behaviorcouldn’t move a single step in the future. However, the deepening of climate crisiswill certainly call back multilateral cooperation in emission reduction at last, and inthat time, carbon tariff will be given great development space. In this dissertation, theauthor treated the carbon tariff as a emission reduction system only, refining itsinternal emission reduction theory, and making it independent of the America and EUcarbon trade barrier policies; thus imposing a precondition of the conclusion of international emission reduction agreement on it, so as to give the carbon tariff aneutral and independent definition; then the author analyzed the legitimacy of carbontariff under the WTO legal system by analyzing the relationship between carbon tariffand the “WTO Agreement”, Rules of GATT,“the Agreement on Technical Barriers toTrade”, as well as some multilateral environment agreements. After that, the authormade similar analyses on American International “Reserve Allowance Program” andthe EU policy of involving aircraft industry into ETS system，then proved them to beunlawful and irrational. At last, some recommendations were made to our countries’replying the carbon tariff, mainly including imposing carbon tax domestically,building and perfecting our own emission trading system, exploiting and utilizing theCDM resources rationally, developing low-carbon technique as well as low-carbonproducts.