The United Nations University and the Global Environment Information Center convened a Special Event on international trade and the Kyoto Protocol Saturday. Laura Campbell, Fulbright Fellow, Faculty of Law, Sophia University, Tokyo, identified areas of potential conflict between climate and trade regimes, notably the WTO, and possibilities for mutually reinforcing measures. She called for more careful consideration of these issues by governments engaged in climate change negotiations. Daniel C Esty, Director, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, addressed the far reaching consequences of the climate change regime for the price structure of most products and the importance of addressing ‘competitiveness stress’ in designing the Kyoto mechanisms. He also advocated the use of trade as an enforcement tool and called for a tiered system of obligations involving all the Parties to the UNFCCC. Jacob Werksman, Managing Director and Senior Lawyer, FIELD, UK, provided an update on the negotiations of a Multilateral Agreement on Investment and outlined possible tensions arising from implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.

For more information see Global Climate Governance: A Report on the Inter-linkages between the Kyoto Protocol and other Multilateral Regimes prepared by the United Nations University, the Global Environment Information Centre and the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies. Information about the project is available at http://www.geic.or.jp/ and the report is available at http://www.geic.or.jp/climgov/index.html.

Right: Daniel Esty and Lavanya Rajamani

Daniel Esty talks to Lavanya Rajamani and Peter Doran of the ENB about the relationship between the climate change and trade regimes and gives an assessment of the negotiations in Buenos Aires. Esty is a former US negotiator.

Project web sites:

• United Nations University: http://www.unu.edu/
• Global Environment Information Centre: http://www.geic.or.jp/
• UNU Institute of Advanced Studies: http://www.ias.unu.edu/