Climate Clubs for a Sustainable Future: The Role of International Trade

Climate Clubs for a Sustainable Future, a revolutionary book by one of the world’s foremost authorities on international economic law, delves deep into the role of international trade and investment law and explains how free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties can be used as a powerful tool to help alleviate climate change. The science, economics as well as the law of climate change are known to us. Nonetheless, what is not known to us is how countries may join hands to cooperate on climate change mitigation. In this vein, the role of international trade in climate change, although globally recognized, is not well understood.

Emphasizing the idea of climate clubs—namely the coalition of the willing—among governments, companies, and/or international institutions, the book provides a sagacious analysis of the following aspects of the trade–climate linkage:

• formation of climate clubs
• legitimacy and accountability
• technological cooperation
• green patents
• how competition law hinders effective cooperation between companies seeking to produce sustainable goods
• domestic policy preferences
• whether certain States should legitimately be allowed to be free riders, and sanctions for noncompliance

This book contains three detailed case studies: a comparison of the U.S. and European Union (EU) Generalized System of Preferences programs, energy security in the Arab world, and EU–Russia energy trade relations.

Fortifying the author’s belief that global access to energy, mitigating climate change, and benefit from international trade and investment can all be achieved, this book furnishes a new perspective on the international trading system as a way to reach a prosperous, modern, and sustainable society that will help decarbonize the economy effectively. All professionals and policymakers concerned with climate change mitigation, and particularly those active at its nexus with international trade, will highly appreciate it.