WTO In The Context Of Climate Change:Challenges And Reforms

Catastrophic global warming has put forward an austere challenge to the survival and development of mankind, but the international community still lacks a strong and effective international agreement to address climate change. Considering the carbon leakage problem and the loss of industrial competitiveness, the European Union and the United States, as representatives of the developed countries, attempt to take unilateral trade measures in order to maintain fair competition and indirectly force developing countries to assume responsibility for emissions reductions. Carbon tariff measure is one of such measures which intertwined with political and economic interests. It combines the rationality of environmental protection and trade protectionism. This paper starts from the carbon tariff measures’compatibility with WTO rules, analyzed the impact of WTO rules in the context of global warming, and provides views and suggestions to reform the existing WTO system.The first chapter starts with the interaction between climate change and trade liberalization, and points out that although impacted by climate change, international trade is one of the important ways to solve the problem. It also introduces the current climate change programs and stated that the pursuit of international cooperation in this field will need to take into account the relevance of members’rights and obligations under WTO rules.The second chapter clarifies the legal nature of carbon tariff and then analyzed its inherent rationality. Carbon tariff is a border tax adjustment measure, and is a kind of game equilibrium results from the gamble between developed and developing countries in the background of global warming. It has both historical necessity and the realistic rationality.The third chapter is the focus of this paper. After a detailed analysis of the challenges to existing WTO rules initiated by the institutional design of carbon tariff, it points out that although WTO has expressed environmental protection and sustainable development concerns, the existing system of WTO rules is still hard to adapt to the requirements of the times, and does not play an effective role in curbing the climate change problem. Therefore, the author advocates that it is an opportunity to launch a "greening" WTO revolution and presents some reform proposals on WTO rules and dispute settlement mechanism in the fourth chapter.