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Linking trade, investment and climate change policies

Briefing Paper
Richard Tarasofsky, June 2007

Download Paper here

• Aligning climate change, trade and investment policies is critical to meeting climate change policy objectives. There is considerable potential for a win-win situation between trade liberalization and climate change, but in some cases trade restrictions may be justified.
• The WTO, bilateral trade and investment arrangements, and the Kyoto Protocol do not yet have the institutional or political capacity to send sufficiently strong market signals on climate change: stumbling blocks are political, economic, and technical.
• More internationally accepted product standards have the potential to be reinforced by trade and investment frameworks. It would be useful to develop these in specialized bodies, but this approach will only succeed if trade and investment frameworks are considered supportive, not obstacles to their effectiveness.