Paris Needs Geneva, and Vice Versa
| Author | Po‐Ching Lee,C. Y. Cyrus Chu |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12584 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
Paris Needs Geneva, and Vice Versa
C. Y. Cyrus Chu and Po-Ching Lee
Permanent Mission of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu to the WTO
Abstract
This paper proposes and seeks to explain how the launching of a new negotiation on trade in carbon-reduction-related goods
and services in Geneva could help to restore the effective market penetration of the Paris Agreement mechanisms, and how
the subsequent implementation of the Paris Agreement can revitalize the so-called ‘paralyzed WTO‘at Geneva. It suggests that
new negotiations be dedicated to the liberalization of trade in goods that relate closely to greenhouse-gas reduction. Drawing
on experiences from the stalled Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) negotiations, this narrowing of the scope of the talks
might help establish a clear theme, thus avoiding potential conflicts of interest among the negotiating parties. Moreover, if
the market penetration of green technologies is to be advanced effectively, negotiations must cover trade in related services
(e.g. systems engineering) as well. Inclusion of services can also mitigate the ‘critical mass’concerns inherent in the goods-
only context. Improving market access to government procurements and facilitating technology transfer in carbon-reduction
sectors will help to spread green technologies globally, and could be the topic of the new framework. In the end, the paper
envisages a scenario of high participation and offers a possible approach to the initiation of new talks.
Background
During his first year in office, the United States President
Donald Trump has done things that have hurt both Paris
and Geneva respectively. On the one hand, the President
announced that the United States will withdraw from the
Paris Climate Change Agreement (‘Paris Agreement’
hereinafter), which unquestionably slows down the
momentum of the global carbon reduction effort. On the
other hand, President Trump has repeatedly discredited
the World Trade Organization (WTO),
1
located in
Geneva, to the point where some of its Members have
been critical of the United States for having ‘paralyzed
the WTO’.
As Alan Wolff, WTO Deputy Director-General, put it in
his talk in November 2017 (Wolff, 2017b), ‘there is a polit-
ical leadership vacuum in the WTO at Geneva, and coun-
tries are not ready to face this scenario’. Mr. Wolff also
mentioned, in another speech, the failure of the WTO’s
Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) negotiations, which
have not moved since President Trump’s election
(Wolff, 2017a). Because the EGA covers product items
relating to carbon reduction, this lack of progress also
implies a certain vulnerability of the global carbon reduc-
tion goal.
Against this backdrop, this article seeks to map out the
possibility of launching, or re-launching, a trade negotiation
covering goods and services that relate to carbon reduction.
This article will further explain how such a new trade
negotiation taking place at Geneva can help restore the
effective market penetration of Paris’s carbon reduction
mechanisms, and how implementation of the Paris
Agreement can revitalize the so-called ‘paralyzed WTO’at
Geneva.
The Paris Agreement: status and difficulty
A total of 195 member nations signed the Paris Agreement
in December 2015, and 174 of these have ratified as of
February 2018 (United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, 2014). The Paris Agreement sets a target to
hold the increase in global average temperature to well
below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts
to limit the increase to 1.5°C above. To reach this tempera-
ture goal, the Agreement aims to ‘achieve a balance
between the amounts of anthropogenic emissions by
sources and the removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in
the second half of this century’. Each signatory should out-
line the climate actions it will take to contribute to this end
(known as the ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribu-
tion’(INDC) or the ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’
(NDC) after the signatory has ratified the Agreement). The
NDCs will be reviewed every five years. Moreover, under the
Agreement, developed countries should help poorer ones to
adapt to climate change and switch to green energy.
2
The adoption of the Paris Agreement has created a new
context for the interface between climate change and trade.
The Paris Agreement per se is just an announcement. The
signing countries need to adopt policy instruments to real-
ize the goal of curtailing climate change. According to Clara
Brandi’s survey of the existing INDCs and NDCs, 45 per cent
contain a direct reference to trade or trade elements, such
as reducing trade barriers with a view to fostering imports
of climate-friendly vehicles, or regulating imports of old and
inefficient vehicles. Almost all contributions do include refer-
ences to elements that are in one way or another related to
trade, such as renewable energy as a mitigation sector,
energy subsidies or technology transfer (Brandi, 2017, pp.
12–13). Those policy instruments are all broad-sense trade
©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2018) 9:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12584
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 4 . November 2018
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