ON FREE TRADE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE WTO
Journal Title: Journal of Globalization Studies - Year 2010, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
This article focuses on the argument that a free global market benefits the en-vironment. I explore the link between climate change, which has recently emerged as the greatest environmental threat, and world trade, which has grown continuously since WWII. The growth of world trade, facilitated by the GATT-WTO regime, evokes an important question. Is this regime good for the environment, or has it contributed to the increase of greenhouse gases, the primary driver of climate change? While this question cannot be fully an-swered in this paper alone, it is important to consider it now because many of the expected damages caused by climate change may be considerable and nonreversible. After discussing the state of knowledge on the effects of trade on the environment, we evaluate whether the biosphere can accommodate perpetual economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the insights gained by outlining a proposed research program focusing on the WTO and the environment in the context of climate change.
Authors and Affiliations
Rafael Reuveny
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP262823
- DOI -
- Views 108
- Downloads 0
ARE GLOBALIZATION AND GOVERNANCE INTERRELATED? EVIDENCE AMONG WORLD ECONOMIES
This paper is to explore a new way to look at globalization and governance. The objective of this paper is to quantify the degree of globalization together with the degree of governance. The differences of our indices fr...
TOWARDS YET ANOTHER AGE OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION?
This article analyses economic growth and social development in 173 coun-tries. With global economic gravitation shifting to the Indian Ocean/Pacific region (Frank 1998), the article analyses especially the role of MNC (...
INFANT MORTALITY IN THE WORLD-SYSTEM
Results of a study of the cross-national determinants of the 2005 infant mor-tality rate for fifty-nine low and middle-income countries are reported here. We examined the empirical validity of four macro-social change th...
AFRICA AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY: ACQUIESCENCE AND RESPONSES
The Westphalian narrative has been the compass of International Relations (IR). It sustains a Eurocentric hegemony in IR theory – ascribing to itself the nucleus of the international system. Indeed, international theory...
FROM THE ALIENATION OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO TRANSMODERN WAYS OF BEING: EPISTEMIC CHANGE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM
This paper proposes that humanity has entered a new historical epoch in the evolution of the world-system, one defined by the collapse of the modern world-system. It conceptualizes neoliberal globalization as the final h...