1.-Anticipating Pressing Issues in Integration:The Trade, Climate and Sustainable Development Nexus
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Trineesh Biswas and Ingrid Jegou
No environmental issue has ever had more implications for trade than climate change. Altered weather patterns will reshape important sectors of economic activity such as agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. And policy responses to climate change -moves to mitigate emissions and promote adaptation- will directly affect the way we produce and consume. They will affect not just what we trade, but how we trade it; international transport costs are sure to be influenced. Trade-related activity can in turn affect climate and help or exacerbate its unnatural change. Trade-led growth can increase consumption and add to emissions. But freer trade can also lead to more efficient resource use, thus reducing production-related emissions, for instance. Despite the obvious links, the relationship between trade governance and efforts to address climate through the crafting of international rules and policy frameworks, has been characterized by avoidance rather than collaboration over the past 20 years. This is no longer the case. With the negotiations for international cooperative approaches to climate change yielding little of concrete value, some individual countries have gone ahead with domestic policies to reduce emissions. These moves, however, have been accompanied by ensuing concerns about competitiveness: would domestic producers be able to compete with foreign growers or manufacturers that face lesser carbon constraints? Would production simply move abroad to less demanding jurisdictions?Read more…
2.-Globalization, Climate Change and Latin America: Implications for Development
Grant Aldonas
Delay in reaching agreement on climate change may prove helpful if used to think through the implications of the proposed regime from a development perspective. Analyzing proposed climate change mitigation measures from the perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) producers is imperative in light of the globalization’s impact on the organization of production. Commercial standards imposed by firms operating global supply chains pose a more significant hurdle for regional producers, particularly smaller firms than do conventional trade barriers. The cost of compliance with such standards will rise regardless of the form in which developed country (DDC) markets implement mitigation measures. To be effective, such measures will require enterprises to account for the carbon emissions throughout their entire production process. Carbon accounting standards flowing through global firms to their suppliers in LAC will, at a minimum, raise costs and potentially prevent smaller firms from qualifying as suppliers. Unless addressed as a part of a global climate change pact or trade capacity building programs, the resulting standards may drive smaller producers out of the global economy and into poverty, with significant implications for both development and the environment in the region.Read more…
3.-Controlling Climate Change: Challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean
Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jisun Kim
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) contain a wide variety of ecosystems and abundant natural resources. They are not major contributors to the current level of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, but unfortunately they are predicted to be highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. While climate change challenges LAC in many ways, the good news is that it also offers opportunities. The region has a comparative advantage in pursuing a low-carbon growth path and international climate talks suggest that mitigations efforts -notably, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD)- can bring money and technology to the region. With a focus on implications for LAC, this paper examines the status of international talks under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -with an emphasis on the outcome of the UNFCCC talks held in Copenhagen in December 2009- and summarizes the climate policy options that are now being considered in the United States (US). In addition, the paper briefly discusses low-carbon energy options in the region and existing rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that bear on climate policies.Read more…
4.-Tackling Climate Change in Latin America andthe Caribbean: Issues for an Agenda
Sandra Polónia Rios and Pedro da Motta Veiga
Latin America is extremely vulnerable to climate change. While the negative effects of climate change tend to affect all the region’s countries, their physical and socioeconomic heterogeneity means there are a variety of factors of vulnerability, and the social and sectoral distribution of the impact varies from one country and/or subregion to the next. It is on account of this diversity that the importance attached in national agendas to emissions mitigation or climate disturbance adaptation-related issues varies greatly from one subregion to another, and even within certain subregions. Countries’ national positions in multilateral climate negotiations are influenced by their emissions profile and perceptions of vulnerabilities, opportunity cost assessment, the country’s relative size, and foreign policy aspects. The heterogeneity of the region’s countries hampers regional cooperation initiatives geared both to adaptation and mitigation, and to coordinated action in multilateral negotiations. The picture is different when we look at the subregions: in Central America and the Caribbean, the impact of global warming tends to be more consistent, facilitating cooperation initiatives and the adoption of joint negotiating positions; in South America, however, the diversity of conditions is far more extreme. Here, the pursuit of variable geometry alliances and of issue-centered cooperation seems to make more sense.Read more…
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Trineesh Biswas and Ingrid Jegou
No environmental issue has ever had more implications for trade than climate change. Altered weather patterns will reshape important sectors of economic activity such as agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. And policy responses to climate change -moves to mitigate emissions and promote adaptation- will directly affect the way we produce and consume. They will affect not just what we trade, but how we trade it; international transport costs are sure to be influenced. Trade-related activity can in turn affect climate and help or exacerbate its unnatural change. Trade-led growth can increase consumption and add to emissions. But freer trade can also lead to more efficient resource use, thus reducing production-related emissions, for instance. Despite the obvious links, the relationship between trade governance and efforts to address climate through the crafting of international rules and policy frameworks, has been characterized by avoidance rather than collaboration over the past 20 years. This is no longer the case. With the negotiations for international cooperative approaches to climate change yielding little of concrete value, some individual countries have gone ahead with domestic policies to reduce emissions. These moves, however, have been accompanied by ensuing concerns about competitiveness: would domestic producers be able to compete with foreign growers or manufacturers that face lesser carbon constraints? Would production simply move abroad to less demanding jurisdictions?Read more…
2.-Globalization, Climate Change and Latin America: Implications for Development
Grant Aldonas
Delay in reaching agreement on climate change may prove helpful if used to think through the implications of the proposed regime from a development perspective. Analyzing proposed climate change mitigation measures from the perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) producers is imperative in light of the globalization’s impact on the organization of production. Commercial standards imposed by firms operating global supply chains pose a more significant hurdle for regional producers, particularly smaller firms than do conventional trade barriers. The cost of compliance with such standards will rise regardless of the form in which developed country (DDC) markets implement mitigation measures. To be effective, such measures will require enterprises to account for the carbon emissions throughout their entire production process. Carbon accounting standards flowing through global firms to their suppliers in LAC will, at a minimum, raise costs and potentially prevent smaller firms from qualifying as suppliers. Unless addressed as a part of a global climate change pact or trade capacity building programs, the resulting standards may drive smaller producers out of the global economy and into poverty, with significant implications for both development and the environment in the region.Read more…
3.-Controlling Climate Change: Challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean
Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jisun Kim
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) contain a wide variety of ecosystems and abundant natural resources. They are not major contributors to the current level of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, but unfortunately they are predicted to be highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. While climate change challenges LAC in many ways, the good news is that it also offers opportunities. The region has a comparative advantage in pursuing a low-carbon growth path and international climate talks suggest that mitigations efforts -notably, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD)- can bring money and technology to the region. With a focus on implications for LAC, this paper examines the status of international talks under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -with an emphasis on the outcome of the UNFCCC talks held in Copenhagen in December 2009- and summarizes the climate policy options that are now being considered in the United States (US). In addition, the paper briefly discusses low-carbon energy options in the region and existing rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that bear on climate policies.Read more…
4.-Tackling Climate Change in Latin America andthe Caribbean: Issues for an Agenda
Sandra Polónia Rios and Pedro da Motta Veiga
Latin America is extremely vulnerable to climate change. While the negative effects of climate change tend to affect all the region’s countries, their physical and socioeconomic heterogeneity means there are a variety of factors of vulnerability, and the social and sectoral distribution of the impact varies from one country and/or subregion to the next. It is on account of this diversity that the importance attached in national agendas to emissions mitigation or climate disturbance adaptation-related issues varies greatly from one subregion to another, and even within certain subregions. Countries’ national positions in multilateral climate negotiations are influenced by their emissions profile and perceptions of vulnerabilities, opportunity cost assessment, the country’s relative size, and foreign policy aspects. The heterogeneity of the region’s countries hampers regional cooperation initiatives geared both to adaptation and mitigation, and to coordinated action in multilateral negotiations. The picture is different when we look at the subregions: in Central America and the Caribbean, the impact of global warming tends to be more consistent, facilitating cooperation initiatives and the adoption of joint negotiating positions; in South America, however, the diversity of conditions is far more extreme. Here, the pursuit of variable geometry alliances and of issue-centered cooperation seems to make more sense.Read more…
FUENTE:
[CAN-LA]
Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis
