Gallagher Publishes Journal Article on Trade and Climate Change
Kevin Gallagher, Professor of Global Development Policy and Director of the Global Development Policy Center at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent journal article exploring the relationship between trade policy and climate change in the United States. Gallagher co-authored the article with Matthew C. Porterfield and Judith Claire Schachter, of the Georgetown University Law Center.
Gallagher’s article, entitled Assessing the Climate Impacts of U.S. Trade Agreements, was published in Volume 7, Issue 1 of the University of Michigan’s legal journal The Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law (MJEAL).
From the abstract of the article:
Meeting the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement will require the United States and other major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to integrate climate change considerations into all relevant areas of economic policy. The United States, however, has conspicuously failed to do so with regard to international trade negotiations. International trade agreements tend to increase GHG emissions due to the economic effects of trade liberalization, including increases in the scale of economic activity and changes in the composition of the affected economies. Trade agreements can also affect climate change in less quantifiable but potentially more significant ways by restricting the ability of governments to implement measures designed to mitigate climate change. Trade and investment rules in U.S. trade agreements have already been invoked to challenge a number of policies relevant to climate change, ranging from renewable energy programs to the Obama administration’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
Yet despite the growing evidence of the relevance of trade policy to climate change, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) largely ignores potential climate impacts when preparing environmental reviews of proposed trade agreements as required under Executive Order 13141. This Article explores how the USTR could address climate change within the environmental review process to both assess the potential economically driven and regulatory impacts of proposed trade agreements for climate change and identify options for mitigating those impacts.
Gallagher served on the U.S. Department of State’s Investment Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the International Investment Division of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He has served as a visiting or adjunct professor at the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China; and the Center for State and Society in Argentina. You can follow him on Twitter @KevinPGallagher.