Dr Rafael Leal-Arcas has published a new book titled Climate Change and International Trade.
This book is divided into three parts and 9 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the nexus between international trade and climate change mitigation. This book is therefore not about climate change adaptation, nor is it an analysis of the policies on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. Part 1 (Chapters 2 and 3) sets the scene of climate change mitigation and international trade law. Chapter 2 introduces the climate change challenge. Given the fact that climate change is a vast topic, the chapter's scope is limited to providing a basic background to the current global warming situation. Chapter 3 provides a historical analysis of the link between international trade and the environment generally in order to then offer an analysis of issues for potential tension between the international regimes of trade and climate change.
Part 2 (Chapters 4 and 5) analyzes the current state of play of climate change mitigation. Chapter 4 is devoted to the main legal, structural, and policy responses to climate change mitigation by providing an analysis of most of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) that have taken place. Chapter 5 analyzes the Kyoto Protocol and provides an analysis of the three main players in global climate change negotiations: the U.S., China, and the EU. One could analyze other major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters (such as India and Brazil), but only the China, the U.S., and the EU have been analyzed, as they are by far the major GHG emitters.
Part 3 (Chapters 6 to 8) offers various options to mitigate climate change more effectively. Chapter 6 presents an innovative way to deal with global climate change negotiations by drawing lessons from the evolution of the multilateral trading system as a basis upon which to move the climate change mitigation agenda forward. It also provides an alternative architecture for climate change mitigation from the bottom up, deals with sectoral agreements, and demonstrates how incentives to join the multilateral framework agreement on climate change can be framed, including trade policy instruments. It argues that the international community should start building, bottom up, a network of sectoral regulatory and financial arrangements. Chapter 7 provides an analysis of the link between regional trade agreements and climate change mitigation as a potentially effective way to create a future global climate agreement. Chapter 8 presents geoengineering as a future technique to cancel the effects of human-induced climate change and its relation to international trade. The book concludes with Chapter 9, which provides some recommendations for the future of climate change mitigation.