HKS Affiliated Authors

Excerpt

What the WTO can learn from Paris climate talks. Robert Lawrence, December 7, 2015, Opinion. "For many years, negotiators at the annual conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change looked longingly at how the World Trade Organization was able to negotiate effective international agreements. Ironically, the Paris climate talks that are scheduled to conclude on Friday and the WTO negotiations, which will take place next week in Nairobi, lead to the opposite conclusion. Trade negotiators should emulate the progress made in the climate change agreements by moving away from a simplistic division between developed and developing countries. For years, global climate change policy was hobbled by this division. In the Kyoto Protocol — the international agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions — only developed countries committed to mandatory emissions reduction. Developing countries had no obligations. ... " Link