Environmental Policy Archives - WITA

Climate Diplomacy and Trade – a NextGenTrade™ Discussion – from the 2023 WITA Washington International Trade Conference

Nolan Johnson — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 20:26:51 +0000

Climate Diplomacy and Trade – a NextGenTrade Discussion

Panel Speakers:

Dan Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School – on public service leave at the World Trade Organization

David Livingston, Managing Director for Clean Energy & Senior Advisor, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry

Kelly Milton, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environmental and Natural Resources, Office of the United States Trade Representative

Julio José Prado, Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investment and Fisheries, Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries of Ecuador

Ambassador Jo Tyndall, Director, Environment Directorate, OECD

Moderator: Maureen Hinman, Co-Founder, Chairman, Silverado Policy Accelerator

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Time To Green EU Trade Policy: But How?

Griffin Ursin — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 20:25:52 +0000

“Is trade bad for the environment?” is the simple question that was asked on July 11 to the 110 young professionals and students coming from 25 member States, who were participating to the Budapest European Agora. 40% of them answered yes. 37% answered no and 23% admitted they do not know. These results highlight the complexity of this relation. Time has come to democratise this debate and to put concrete solutions on the table.

This is all the more necessary that the 2019 elections have resulted in a rebalancing of political forces at the European Parliament which will necessitate to review the trade environment nexus at EU level for several reasons:

• environment protection featured prominently among the political signals sent by the voters;
• it is, by essence, a global public good issue, better dealt with at EU level;
• the EU is seen as having so far exercised a leadership role in this area of global governance;
• trade is one of the few really “federalised” EU competences;
• as such, it remains the main EU lever to influence the global agenda, starting with SDGs.

This is confirmed by noticeable developments since the elections, such as the new President of the Commission declaring that she is in favour of border carbon taxes (a first), or by the growing debate on the preservation of the rainforest that have surfaced as a result of the EU and Mercosur’s agreement reached after 25 years of bilateral trade negotiations.

Even if trade measures are not among the “first best solutions” to tackle environmental degradations, revisiting the EU stance in this area appears, both necessary and urgent, starting with climate change related aspects. This is also true about other issues such as biodiversity or ocean governance. It is a highly complex matter, necessitating deep analytical and technical investigations in several areas, new political debates, and search for operational
and implementable solutions.

To download the full paper, please click here.

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White Paper on Artificial Intelligence: a European approach to excellence and trust

Madelyn Cunningham — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 16:41:27 +0000

As digital technology becomes an ever more central part of every aspect of people’s lives, people should be able to trust it. Trustworthiness is also a prerequisite for its uptake. This is a chance for Europe, given its strong attachment to values and the rule of law as well as its proven capacity to build safe, reliable and sophisticated products and services from aeronautics to energy, automotive and medical equipment.

Europe’s current and future sustainable economic growth and societal wellbeing increasingly draws on value created by data. AI is one of the most important applications of the data economy. Today most data are related to consumers and are stored and processed on central cloud-based infrastructure. By contrast a large share of tomorrow’s far more abundant data will come from industry, business and the public sector, and will be stored on a variety of systems, notably on computing devices working at the edge of the network.

This opens up new opportunities for Europe, which has a strong position in digitised industry and business-to-business applications, but a relatively weak position in consumer platforms. Simply put, AI is a collection of technologies that combine data, algorithms and computing power. Advances in computing and the increasing availability of data are therefore key drivers of the current upsurge of AI.

Europe can combine its technological and industrial strengths with a high-quality digital infrastructure and a regulatory framework based on its fundamental values to become a global leader in innovation in the data economy and its applications as set out in the European data strategy. On that basis, it can develop an AI ecosystem that brings the benefits of the technology to the whole of European society and economy:

for citizens to reap new benefits for example improved health care, fewer breakdowns of household machinery, safer and cleaner transport systems, better public services;
for business development, for example a new generation of products and services in areas where Europe is particularly strong (machinery, transport, cybersecurity, farming, the green and circular economy, healthcare and high-value added sectors like fashion and tourism); and
for services of public interest, for example by reducing the costs of providing services (transport, education, energy and waste management), by improving the sustainability of products and by equipping law enforcement authorities with appropriate tools to ensure the security of citizens, with proper safeguards to respect their rights and freedoms.

Given the major impact that AI can have on our society and the need to build trust, it is vital that European AI is grounded in our values and fundamental rights such as human dignity and privacy protection. Furthermore, the impact of AI systems should be considered not only from an individual perspective, but also from the perspective of society as a whole.

The use of AI systems can have a significant role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and in supporting the democratic process and social rights. With its recent proposals on the European Green Deal, Europe is leading the way in tackling climate and environmental-related challenges. Digital technologies such as AI are a critical enabler for attaining the goals of the Green Deal.

Given the increasing importance of AI, the environmental impact of AI systems needs to be duly considered throughout their lifecycle and across the entire supply chain, e.g. as regards resource usage for the training of algorithms and the storage of data. A common European approach to AI is necessary to reach sufficient scale and avoid the fragmentation of the single market.

The introduction of national initiatives risks to endanger legal certainty, to weaken citizens’ trust and to prevent the emergence of a dynamic European industry. This White Paper presents policy options to enable a trustworthy and secure development of AI in Europe, in full respect of the values and rights of EU citizens. The main building blocks of this White Paper are:

The policy framework setting out measures to align efforts at European, national and regional level. In partnership between the private and the public sector, the aim of the framework is to mobilise resources to achieve an ‘ecosystem of excellence’ along the entire value chain, starting in research and innovation, and to create the right incentives to accelerate the adoption of solutions based on AI, including by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The key elements of a future regulatory framework for AI in Europe that will create a unique ‘ecosystem of trust’. To do so, it must ensure compliance with EU rules, including the rules protecting fundamental rights and consumers’ rights, in particular for AI systems operated in the EU that pose a high risk.
- Building an ecosystem of trust is a policy objective in itself, and should give citizens the confidence to take up AI applications and give companies and public organisations the legal certainty to innovate using AI.
- The Commission strongly supports a human-centric approach based on the Communication on Building Trust in Human-Centric AI and will also take into account the input obtained during the piloting phase of the Ethics Guidelines prepared by the High-Level Expert Group on AI.

The European strategy for data, which accompanies this White Paper, aims to enable Europe to become the most attractive, secure and dynamic data-agile economy in the world – empowering Europe with data to improve decisions and better the lives of all its citizens.

The strategy sets out a number of policy measures, including mobilising private and public investments, needed to achieve this goal. Finally, the implications of AI, Internet of Things and other digital technologies for safety and liability legislation are analysed in the Commission Report accompanying this White Paper.

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To view the full report, click here.

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Greening regional trade agreements: Subsidies related to energy and environmental goods

Madelyn Cunningham — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 14:52:26 +0000

Many regional trade agreements (RTAs) contain chapters and articles that are environmentally specific. But Parties can elect to more broadly incorporate environmental objectives in their RTAs to promote their environmental concerns in such agreements. This report investigates in what ways RTAs could incorporate environmental objectives in chapters and articles related to subsidies for energy and environmental goods based on existing practice and information.

Subsidies can have trade effects and are therefore disciplined by the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Agreement disciplines the use of trade distorting subsidies and stipulates actions which Members can take in response, including through the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to seek withdrawal of the subsidy or removal of its adverse effects, or remedial unilateral action in the form of countervailing duties to offset the effects of subsidised imports.

Some subsidies, such as those that support domestic renewable energy development and environmental goods and services, can have stated environmental objectives. On the other hand, certain subsidies may potentially contribute to over-exploitation of natural resources, or result in other environmental impacts, and can be flagged for reduction among Parties consistent with their national priorities.

This paper provides an overview of how trade disciplines on subsidies for energy and environmental goods in certain RTAs could address environmental concerns of Parties. While other subsidies including those for agriculture and fisheries could also have environmental implications, they are excluded from the scope of this report due to the complexity of the issue as well as resources required to develop the work.

In the absence of new multilateral disciplines, RTAs offer an opportunity for like-minded Parties to agree on disciplines. With respect to WTO rules, RTAs can provide an additional layer of disciplines by reaffirming WTO rules, agreeing to deepen or expand multilateral commitments; or agreeing to refrain from taking remedial actions between the Parties to the agreement.

Two specific questions are examined in this paper: (i) to what extent can the objectives of particular subsidies for energy and environmental goods be considered in RTAs without prejudice to WTO obligations and (ii) how could RTAs serve to secure greater transparency of energy and environmentally related subsidies?

Subsidies for the energy and environmental goods can have environmental consequences as well as trade effects, and thus they are an important topic when considering how to green RTAs. The application of local-content requirements in renewable energy development has emerged in the past two decades and is a subject that requires consideration to ensure non- discriminatory measures, including for the environment.

As already observed in agreements such as the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that has been signed but not yet entered into force, Parties may agree to explicitly prohibit the use of such requirements in the framework of RTAs either in relation to renewable energy development or in a general sense as a way to signal the strength of their commitments to non-discriminatory forms of environmental regulation.

This approach can reaffirm the prohibition of local-content requirements under WTO rules that preclude quantitative and mandatory requirements on goods, and provide additional commitments to discipline those attached to services or qualitative requirements such as technology transfer, employment conditions, staff training, joint ventures, local procurement, or domestic equity participation.

In addition, Parties could agree on a set of non-actionable subsidies that clearly benefit the environment. These non-actionable subsidies would be protected from formal WTO challenges and remedial action between like minded Parties. Such an example is provided by the CARICOM Agreement. There are however several issues that require consideration. A first issue is the difficulty of identifying a special regime for the environment and to determine products that count as “environmental goods”.

As a possible solution, Parties may agree on common coding of those goods. A second limitation of creating such carve- outs in RTAs is that these could still be challenged by other WTO members outside of a RTA. Nevertheless, agreeing on non-actionable subsidies related to the environment could initially be a symbolic move between the Parties, it could create a reference point for other RTAs as well as a stepping stone for plurilateral and multilateral agreements.

Subsidy phase-outs based on stated environmental objectives are another area for consideration. Disciplines to progressively reduce fossil-fuel subsidies have been committed in only one RTA, the EU-Singapore Agreement, which has not yet entered into force. Nevertheless, these areas could be further explored between Parties of the willing to encourage reforms to phase-out certain subsidies based on national priorities.

Parties can also commit to increase the transparency of environmentally related subsidies, including by fulfilling their notification obligations under the WTO. For energy and environmentally related subsidies, Parties could reaffirm reporting obligations of the WTO, and also align reporting efforts with existing schemes such as through the OECD, or SDG Indicator 12.c.1 process to avoid unnecessary duplication. As in the EU-Korea FTA, these transparency commitments can also be legally binding and enforceable.

While this report suggests that governments can potentially incorporate environmental objectives in RTAs through chapters and articles related to subsidies in a number of ways, it is a retrospective exercise based on available information or existing provisions in RTAs and does not intend to speculate the effects of possible provisions and proposals. This study also does not intend to judge whether some options are superior to others. To answer the question of whether some of the available options would be more effective or realistic would require additional study on a case-by-case basis.

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To view the full report, click here.

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