Towards a more effective climate policy on international trade

Dietzenbacher, Erik; Cazcarro, Ignacio; Arto, Iñaki

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14837-5

Cited by 55 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…By contrast, some recent contributions apply alternative approaches, based on the counterfactual perspective of the absence of trade. These schemes evaluate a country's imports and exports either relative to the average global emission intensity for the respective goods and services (Kander et al, 2015;Jiborn et al, 2018;Baumert et al, 2019), or from the perspective of how a country's trade specialization contributes to meeting global consumption in a carbon-efficient manner (Dietzenbacher et al, 2020). In this way, reductions in global emission resulting from cleaner exports can be accounted for (in contrast to CBA, which attributes all export-related emissions to trade partners).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits

Jakob

Ward

Steckel

2021

Global Environmental Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How to share responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions between consumers and producers is a highly sensitive question in international climate policy negotiations. Traditional 'Production-Based Accounting' (PBA), which assigns responisibility to the region where emissions are released, has frequently been challenged by 'Consumption-Based Accounting' (CBA) schemes that suggest that greenhouse gas emissions generated to produce traded goods and services should be attributed to their final consumers. PBA and CBA both lack a sound foundation in economic theory as they do not consider the economic benefits accruing to producers or consumers if carbon emissions do not carry a price that reflects their social costs. We build on well-established economic theory to derive how to share responsibility for trade-related emissions between producers and consumers and apply this novel approach for the most prominent bilateral trade relationships using multi-regional input-output data. We propose an 'Economic Benefit Shared Responsibility' (EBSR) scheme, in which China is attributed significantly higher responsibility for emissions than in CBA, while lower emissions and responsibility are attributed to both the US and the EU.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits

Jakob

Ward

Steckel

2021

Global Environmental Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Consumption-based accounting (CBA) considers the emissions embodied in trade but fails to stimulate the producing countries to clean up their export industries. 39 Researchers 34,[39][40][41][42] have proposed adjusted accounting systems to share producer and consumer responsibility [43][44][45] by crediting trade that reduces global emissions and penalizing trade that increases global emissions. Despite these efforts in academia, national and global climate policies have so far not adopted such systems of credits and penalties.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alternatively, if we consider environmental aspects, the story changes. For instance, if we define the advantage as generating fewer emissions in producing a certain product 34 , increased trade in this product will reduce emissions in both countries.…”

Section: Carbon Emission Burdens Of Rcep Tariff Reductionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional trade agreement burdens global carbon emission mitigation

Tian

Zhang

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have been widely adopted to facilitate international trade and cross-border investment and ultimately promote economic development. However, ex ante measurements of the environmental effects of RTAs to date have not been well conducted. Here, we estimate the CO2 emission burdens of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) after evaluating its economic effects. We find that trade among RCEP member countries will increase significantly and economic output will expand with the reduction of regional tariffs. However, the results show that complete tariff elimination among RCEP members would increase the yearly global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion by about 3.12%, which doubles the annual average growth rate of global CO2 emissions in the last decade. The emissions in some developing members will surge. We therefore stress the necessity of balancing carbon mitigation and the pursuit of economic profitability. The technological advancement of emission mitigation and more effective climate policies for international trade are urgently required to avoid undermining international efforts to reduce global emissions.

show abstract

“…Article 6.2 is often interpreted as the basis for developing common modalities for piloting activities, potentially under the auspices of a climate club (Greiner and Michaelowa 2018). It defines cooperative approaches for "internationally transferred mitigation outcomes" and is often seen as the ideal tool for bilateral exchanges and cooperation in addition to the NDCs (Dietzenbacher et al 2020;Franke et al 2020). Article 6.4 is often considered the basis for establishing a "mechanism" to implement carbon markets under the Paris Agreement (Schneider et al 2020;Steinebach and Limberg 2021).…”

Section: Political Governance Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rationale for a Climate Club Embedded in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement – A Pathway to Carbon Neutrality

Stua¹,

Nolden²,

Coulon³

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent times have witnessed an increasing number of countries and private firms pledging carbon neutrality by mid-century. Whilst representing a significant improvement in intentions to tackle climate change, such pledges lack substance and structure. For instance, individual pledges lack coordination and aggregation among peers, while strategies and measures to achieve ambitious targets are largely absent. Moreover, current disagreements obstructing progress in international climate change negotiations further undermine the reliability of carbon neutrality objectives. Effective international policies are needed to foster aggregate mitigation ambitions and the creation of adequate supporting mechanisms. This theoretical paper describes a governance innovation aimed at overcoming such shortfalls and disagreements through a unifying yet customizable pathway towards carbon neutrality. It does so by first outlining a political governance framework based on a climate club interpretation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Secondly, it proposes carbon emission mitigation effort sharing on a per capita basis to ensure efficiency, equity and political feasibility. Thirdly, this paper describes how the supply of certified mitigations of carbon emissions required to satisfy effort sharing-based demand can be assetized as carbon credits by operationalizing Article 6 as a joint certification mechanism. The resulting governance architecture for managing demand and supply of mitigations shifts efforts to tackle climate change from a ‘problem-driven’ cost approach to ‘opportunity-driven’ value creation pathways towards carbon neutrality.

show abstract

Towards a more effective climate policy on international trade

Cited by 55 publications

References 54 publications

Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits

Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits

Regional trade agreement burdens global carbon emission mitigation

Rationale for a Climate Club Embedded in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement – A Pathway to Carbon Neutrality

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About