Practical information
Early Career Workshop June 15th, 2023
The Greening of Trade in a Geo-economic Context?
Effectiveness, Legitimacy, and Justice in the Trade-Environment-Nexus
International trade is increasingly shaped by environmental challenges and geo-economic tensions. States and non-state actors pursue policy instruments with substantive trade- and environmental implications such as the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, the European Green Deal, the US Inflation Reduction Act, Indonesia’s export ban on palm oil, or corporate sustainability standards. The features and interactions of these instruments as well as their consequences for environmental and trade goals, interests, and impacts are still poorly understood
Firstly, the extent to which trade instruments further the ecological transitions needs to be clarified. Policymakers tend to put a premium on leveraging trade dynamics at various scales to achieve environmental goals like carbon neutrality by liberalizing green goods, technology transfer, or emissions trading schemes. However, increasingly trade restrictive measures like carbon border taxes and industrial policy measures are debated considering the environmental footprint of international trade, unintended consequences of trade, and limits of trade instruments to drive economy-wide abatement.
Secondly, international trade seems to become more and more the playground for geo-economic tensions and powerplay, with the US-China-trade conflict and the EU’s decoupling from Russia as most prevalent instances. This geo-economic trend co-shapes the space and opportunity for environmental policies. Whereas western economies discuss about deglobalization, derisking, or reshoring of supply chains, economies in other regions are integrating further in regional or global supply chains, with the African Continental Free Trade Area and the China’s Belt and Road initiative as prominent examples. The relation between these multidirectional developments and the required sustainability transformation are unclear.
Thirdly, the gains and costs of current changes in the trade-environment nexus are not equally distributed. Trade restrictive measures like carbon pricing may lead to increased economic and social costs in other economies. Trade liberalizing measures may reinforce patterns of unequal ecological exchange. The legitimacy of instruments such as certification schemes, due diligence regulations and industrial policies is particularly questioned when extra-territorial markets are regulated. In addition, ecological costs associated with climate crises and biodiversity loss affect countries at different rates and countries bear different historical responsibilities and capacities to align policy responses. It remains thus unclear, how these distributional effects relate to notions of environmental and in particular climate justice.
This workshop aims to critically reflect on these developments and related policy instruments in the trade-environment-nexus. We will address questions across different levels of governance and sectors such as:
- Which designs and instruments are effective in achieving environmental and trade aims?
- How do current geo-economic tensions in trade affect the ecological transformation?
- How do current ecological transitions and transformations and crises affect international trade?
- How legitimate are instruments in the trade-environment-nexus from the perspective of different actors?
- How do public and private actors govern long-term sustainability goals with short-term geopolitical challenges and economic interests?
- How do different actors envision and implement notions environmental and social justice in the trade-environment-nexus?
The workshop is on invitation only.
Should you have any questions about the workshop, please contact us under greentradelab@gmail.com.
Asgeir Barlaup, KU Leuven
Paulina Flores Martinez, University of York
Simon Happersberger, Vrije Universiteit Brussel