The intersection of trade and climate change response action is a crucial nexus for achieving global commitments for sustainable socio-economic development. Trade plays a significant role in contributing to the upliftment of the lives of people and to developing and strengthening economies. Trade can also play even more of a significant role in reconfiguring exploitative value chains and supporting climate action. The ability to participate in international trade also depends on a country's ability to produce and supply competitive products and services to the world.
The conundrum faced by global society is that our sustainable future, as well as our ability to implement climate action, depends on our ability to ensure that international trade is aligning to our obligations and commitments to our climate action and that climate action does not incarnate into green colonialisation. That further exploits and escalates poverty, unemployment and inequality in developing countries.
Plentiful stories of empowerment as well as pain and exploitation mark the development of humanity. While the trade of goods and services has played an integral role in humanity's development, it has also been at costs to both people and our planet. Addressing the climate crisis presents us with a valuable opportunity to build a more inclusive and sustainable global society, one that takes the lessons from our past and builds a better world for all, not only a few. A rare opportunity exists for global society to redesign exploitative value chains, implement and create a just energy transition, whilst at the same time providing real social upliftment and creating sustainable futures for today’s generation and for those still to come.
Tensions, structural inequalities, and competing priorities arise when climate action and trade intersect in a global society moulded by historical asymmetries in socio-economic development, industrial emissions responsibility, and economic power because of historic actions and exploitation. To understand the nexus of climate and trade, we need to understand the existing institutions at global level that are mandated to address these issues: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The beginning of the WTO started in 1947 with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATT was an attempt to incorporate the understanding of the Bretton Woods conference, creating an institution with broad coverage and dealing with the trade in goods. After an initial round of negotiations that led to tariff-reducing agreements among wealthy countries came the round of de-colonisation and developing countries becoming members of the GATT. This saw the first attempt of the GATT to begin considering the concerns of developing countries including the issues of non-tariff barriers such as regulatory and product standard barriers.
The Uruguay Round of negotiations from 1986 to 1994 included negotiation on Intellectual Property rights and services, building up to the establishment of the WTO in 1995. At the WTO’s third ministerial conference held in Seattle in 1999, now famously referred to as the “Battle of Seattle,” large protests highlighted global concerns about free trade, workers' rights, and environmental issues. This paved the way for the 2001 Doha Development Agenda1 (Doha Round), which aims to reform the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules.
The Doha Round work programme covers about twenty areas of trade, including the fundamental objective of improving the trading prospects of developing countries. Moreover, in the Doha Development agenda is the recognition of the inescapable linkages between trade, development, and the environment, with a focus on the need for developing countries to develop their own agendas for this integration in line with other multilateral rules. Importantly, it recognised further the need to support Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) for developing countries. Especially since in many developing countries, socio-economic development relies on energy that is carbon intensive, based primarily on fossil fuels.
The Doha Development Agenda is yet to be finalised, and some argue it is a failure. In 2014, because of the Doha Round’s lack of finalisation or focus attention to finalise the Doha Round negotiations, a group of fourteen members of the WTO issuing a joint statement to begin negotiating a plurilateral agreement2 called the “Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA).”3 These negotiations have stalled since 2016, as countries were unable to reach consensus on the scope and coverage of the list of environmental goods due to potential implications on trade diversion and increased competition from imports.4 Some countries dispute the validity of entering into plurilateral agreements, and have blocked other Plurilateral Agreements, such as the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement, as, they argue, it shifts the focus of finalising the Doha Round of negotiations.
Another important feature of the WTO is that it houses a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), which is currently the only supranational body capable of rendering compulsory judgements on disputes between countries. Due to the paralysis of the DSB, resulting from a member blocking the establishment of the Appellate Body, the WTO ceases to function optimally. Whilst the Committee on Trade and Environment at the WTO is a standing forum dedicated to dialogue amongst the entire WTO membership on the impact of trade policies on the environment and environmental policies on trade, the work of this committee has yet to find its way to the UNFCCC negotiations or to find synergies to support concrete outcomes.
Under the UNFCCC, the most important forum to address the nexus of climate and trade is the Forum on the Impact of implementation of response measures, which was established at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) under the Cancun Agreement. The UNFCCC also upholds the principle of equity, Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC). Since 2010, the work of the forum has focused on deepening the understanding of economic and social consequences of response measures, and on the impact of unilateral climate measures of developed countries and their negative cross-border impacts on developing countries. Importantly, this forum also tracks Article 3, paragraph 14, of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires each Party included in Annex I to the Convention (Annex I Party) to implement the commitments mentioned in Article 3, paragraph 1, of the Kyoto Protocol, in such a way as to minimize adverse social, environmental, and economic impacts on developing country Parties, particularly those identified in Article 4, paragraphs 8 and 9 of the Convention.5
At this forum’s meetings during sessions of the UNFCCC, many developed countries continue to argue that trade issues must not be discussed at the UNFCCC but must be discussed at the WTO, but when climate issues comes to the Committee on Trade and the Environment developed countries also raise the issue that climate must go to the UNFCCC – leaving the nexus challenges of trade and climate without a home to be discussed concretely. At the first Global Stocktake in Baku, parties affirm, in Article 154 that “Parties should cooperate on promoting a supportive and open international economic system aimed at achieving sustainable economic growth and development in all countries and thus enabling them to better to address the problems of climate change, noting that measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade.”6
This commitment resonates with the UNFCCC’s Article 3.5, which stipulates that “Parties should cooperate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to sustainable economic growth and development in all Parties, particularly developing country Parties, thus enabling them better to address the problems of climate change. Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”7 and is further strengthened by the Paris Agreement’s Article 4.15, “Parties shall take into consideration in the implementation of this Agreement the concerns of Parties with economies most affected by the impacts of response measures, particularly developing country Parties.”8
As we implement the Paris Agreement and the rise of more developing countries harnessing their strategic resources, such as minerals, solar energy, or hydrogen energy, to benefit their populations, tensions/trade-offs will emerge between industrialisation, trade, and sustainable development and will be escalated. Moreover, as some developed countries design and implement their unilateral climate measures with negative (intended or unintended) cross-border impacts to amplify their climate response measures the knock-on impacts will be felt most by those vulnerable and in particular need of protection in development and least developed countries. Amidst geopolitical shifts and tensions, the reality of a stronger more collaborative multipolar global system becomes more evident. History is repeated with many examples of the occurrences of zero-sum games.
Another area of mutual concern for the UNFCCC and the WTO is Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in relation to the requirements to support technology transfer as a means of climate action, especially for developing countries. IPRs can pose significant obstacles to technology transfer and the obligations of the UNFCCC commitments to this area, given that addressing climate change necessitates a profound transformation of production systems in developing countries while it is imperative to take all possible measures to reduce the financial and institutional burdens associated with accessing and deploying new technologies.
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has provision of flexibilities used for the compulsory licensing of IP for health emergencies. The “flexibilities” in the TRIPS Agreement can be significant for access to green technology. These flexibilities are in various provisions that allow governments to relax some basic obligations of intellectual property protection, such as patent rights, under certain conditions. In March 2013, a submission was made, entitled “Contribution of IP to Facilitating the Transfer of Environmentally Rational Technology.”9 While the WTO’s Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Committee on Trade and Environment continue to engage on aspects of intellectual property (IP), including technology transfer, patent information and trade-related IP data not much meaningful progress has been achieved in addressing climate and trade technology transfer agreements. Importantly and to date, the amended TRIPS Agreement applies to 141 members.10 Twenty-five members have yet to accept the Protocol. The current period for accepting the protocol runs until 31 December 2025. Moreover, in the July 2025 meetings of the Committee on Trade and Environment the WTO members have reiterated "their strong engagement to exploring the relationship between trade and the environment during the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE).”11 Whilst at the UNFCCC, the parties are still hesitant to find convergence on trade and climate – as evident by the June 2025 Bonn agenda adoption saga, which saw the Bonn June 2025 meetings’ agenda being delayed due to the developing countries request to give Unilateral Climate Measures with negative cross border impacts specific attention during the UNFCCC’s Bonn 2025 session.
To conclude, meaningful discussion on these areas in both the WTO and the UNFCCC must happen and find convergence. Put simply, it is time that the work of the WTO and the UNFCCC moves away from organisations wanting to protect their own turf and their own goals and instead find convergence to call out the elephant in the room. To forge our global societies sustainable trajectory, we need to leverage the importance of trade for development and climate action for humanity and the environment as a combined good.
Socio-economic development of the Global South must be central to the discussion on how to participate fully, with the necessary support that is committed to delivering fully derived opportunities and benefit from the decarbonisation energy transition, shaping meaningful win-win outcomes. Protectionist and unilateral approaches represent an outdated governance structure that does not speak to our modern society and must be reformed with urgency. Carbon emissions know no borders. The nexus of trade governance and climate commitments is a defining test of our global aspiration to solve complex problems as a unified global society.
The global economic system as it exists must evolve to help address the modern challenges we are faced with, not serve as a foundation for upholding inequality and injustices. If trade is to serve as a conduit rather than a constraint for climate ambition, then principles of equity, access, and mutual benefit must be embedded at the heart of global governance. This is especially critical for developing countries, whose ability to decarbonise depends not only on political will but also on fair access to technologies, finance, capacity-building, and markets. The challenge lies in designing a shared agenda that does not see climate action and economic development as competing priorities but instead as co-dependent imperatives.
The continued legitimacy of the WTO and the UNFCCC will be measured by their ability to enable socio-economic development, deliver a just transition, enforce differentiated responsibilities, and deepen solidarity amongst nations. Moreover, the collaboration and convergence of industrial sectors, in knowledge-sharing, policy alignment and support, from the global North and global South to find mutually advantageous partnerships in the trade and climate nexus might offer our planet the path forging we all need. All eyes will shift to Brazil and Cameroon as we anticipate the UNFCCC’s COP30 and the WTO’s Ministerial Conference 14 with convergence of actors and commitments to necessary support reforms, tangible socio-economic development and climate action.
SLYCAN Trust is a non-profit think tank. It has been a registered legal entity in the form of a trust since 2016, and a guarantee limited company since 2019. The entities focus on the thematic areas of climate change, adaptation and resilience, sustainable development, environmental conservation and restoration, social justice, and animal welfare. SLYCAN Trust’s activities include legal and policy research, education and awareness creation, capacity building and training, and implementation of ground level action. SLYCAN Trust aims to facilitate and contribute to multi-stakeholder driven, inclusive and participatory actions for a sustainable and resilient future for all.
The intersection of trade and climate change response action is a crucial nexus for achieving global commitments for sustainable socio-economic development. Trade plays a significant role in contributing to the upliftment of the lives of people and to developing and strengthening economies. Trade can also play even more of a significant role in reconfiguring exploitative value chains and supporting climate action. The ability to participate in international trade also depends on a country's ability to produce and supply competitive products and services to the world.
The conundrum faced by global society is that our sustainable future, as well as our ability to implement climate action, depends on our ability to ensure that international trade is aligning to our obligations and commitments to our climate action and that climate action does not incarnate into green colonialisation. That further exploits and escalates poverty, unemployment and inequality in developing countries.
Plentiful stories of empowerment as well as pain and exploitation mark the development of humanity. While the trade of goods and services has played an integral role in humanity's development, it has also been at costs to both people and our planet. Addressing the climate crisis presents us with a valuable opportunity to build a more inclusive and sustainable global society, one that takes the lessons from our past and builds a better world for all, not only a few. A rare opportunity exists for global society to redesign exploitative value chains, implement and create a just energy transition, whilst at the same time providing real social upliftment and creating sustainable futures for today’s generation and for those still to come.
Tensions, structural inequalities, and competing priorities arise when climate action and trade intersect in a global society moulded by historical asymmetries in socio-economic development, industrial emissions responsibility, and economic power because of historic actions and exploitation. To understand the nexus of climate and trade, we need to understand the existing institutions at global level that are mandated to address these issues: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The beginning of the WTO started in 1947 with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATT was an attempt to incorporate the understanding of the Bretton Woods conference, creating an institution with broad coverage and dealing with the trade in goods. After an initial round of negotiations that led to tariff-reducing agreements among wealthy countries came the round of de-colonisation and developing countries becoming members of the GATT. This saw the first attempt of the GATT to begin considering the concerns of developing countries including the issues of non-tariff barriers such as regulatory and product standard barriers.
The Uruguay Round of negotiations from 1986 to 1994 included negotiation on Intellectual Property rights and services, building up to the establishment of the WTO in 1995. At the WTO’s third ministerial conference held in Seattle in 1999, now famously referred to as the “Battle of Seattle,” large protests highlighted global concerns about free trade, workers' rights, and environmental issues. This paved the way for the 2001 Doha Development Agenda1 (Doha Round), which aims to reform the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules.
The Doha Round work programme covers about twenty areas of trade, including the fundamental objective of improving the trading prospects of developing countries. Moreover, in the Doha Development agenda is the recognition of the inescapable linkages between trade, development, and the environment, with a focus on the need for developing countries to develop their own agendas for this integration in line with other multilateral rules. Importantly, it recognised further the need to support Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) for developing countries. Especially since in many developing countries, socio-economic development relies on energy that is carbon intensive, based primarily on fossil fuels.
The Doha Development Agenda is yet to be finalised, and some argue it is a failure. In 2014, because of the Doha Round’s lack of finalisation or focus attention to finalise the Doha Round negotiations, a group of fourteen members of the WTO issuing a joint statement to begin negotiating a plurilateral agreement2 called the “Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA).”3 These negotiations have stalled since 2016, as countries were unable to reach consensus on the scope and coverage of the list of environmental goods due to potential implications on trade diversion and increased competition from imports.4 Some countries dispute the validity of entering into plurilateral agreements, and have blocked other Plurilateral Agreements, such as the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement, as, they argue, it shifts the focus of finalising the Doha Round of negotiations.
Another important feature of the WTO is that it houses a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), which is currently the only supranational body capable of rendering compulsory judgements on disputes between countries. Due to the paralysis of the DSB, resulting from a member blocking the establishment of the Appellate Body, the WTO ceases to function optimally. Whilst the Committee on Trade and Environment at the WTO is a standing forum dedicated to dialogue amongst the entire WTO membership on the impact of trade policies on the environment and environmental policies on trade, the work of this committee has yet to find its way to the UNFCCC negotiations or to find synergies to support concrete outcomes.
Under the UNFCCC, the most important forum to address the nexus of climate and trade is the Forum on the Impact of implementation of response measures, which was established at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) under the Cancun Agreement. The UNFCCC also upholds the principle of equity, Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC). Since 2010, the work of the forum has focused on deepening the understanding of economic and social consequences of response measures, and on the impact of unilateral climate measures of developed countries and their negative cross-border impacts on developing countries. Importantly, this forum also tracks Article 3, paragraph 14, of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires each Party included in Annex I to the Convention (Annex I Party) to implement the commitments mentioned in Article 3, paragraph 1, of the Kyoto Protocol, in such a way as to minimize adverse social, environmental, and economic impacts on developing country Parties, particularly those identified in Article 4, paragraphs 8 and 9 of the Convention.5
At this forum’s meetings during sessions of the UNFCCC, many developed countries continue to argue that trade issues must not be discussed at the UNFCCC but must be discussed at the WTO, but when climate issues comes to the Committee on Trade and the Environment developed countries also raise the issue that climate must go to the UNFCCC – leaving the nexus challenges of trade and climate without a home to be discussed concretely. At the first Global Stocktake in Baku, parties affirm, in Article 154 that “Parties should cooperate on promoting a supportive and open international economic system aimed at achieving sustainable economic growth and development in all countries and thus enabling them to better to address the problems of climate change, noting that measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade.”6
This commitment resonates with the UNFCCC’s Article 3.5, which stipulates that “Parties should cooperate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to sustainable economic growth and development in all Parties, particularly developing country Parties, thus enabling them better to address the problems of climate change. Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”7 and is further strengthened by the Paris Agreement’s Article 4.15, “Parties shall take into consideration in the implementation of this Agreement the concerns of Parties with economies most affected by the impacts of response measures, particularly developing country Parties.”8
As we implement the Paris Agreement and the rise of more developing countries harnessing their strategic resources, such as minerals, solar energy, or hydrogen energy, to benefit their populations, tensions/trade-offs will emerge between industrialisation, trade, and sustainable development and will be escalated. Moreover, as some developed countries design and implement their unilateral climate measures with negative (intended or unintended) cross-border impacts to amplify their climate response measures the knock-on impacts will be felt most by those vulnerable and in particular need of protection in development and least developed countries. Amidst geopolitical shifts and tensions, the reality of a stronger more collaborative multipolar global system becomes more evident. History is repeated with many examples of the occurrences of zero-sum games.
Another area of mutual concern for the UNFCCC and the WTO is Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in relation to the requirements to support technology transfer as a means of climate action, especially for developing countries. IPRs can pose significant obstacles to technology transfer and the obligations of the UNFCCC commitments to this area, given that addressing climate change necessitates a profound transformation of production systems in developing countries while it is imperative to take all possible measures to reduce the financial and institutional burdens associated with accessing and deploying new technologies.
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has provision of flexibilities used for the compulsory licensing of IP for health emergencies. The “flexibilities” in the TRIPS Agreement can be significant for access to green technology. These flexibilities are in various provisions that allow governments to relax some basic obligations of intellectual property protection, such as patent rights, under certain conditions. In March 2013, a submission was made, entitled “Contribution of IP to Facilitating the Transfer of Environmentally Rational Technology.”9 While the WTO’s Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Committee on Trade and Environment continue to engage on aspects of intellectual property (IP), including technology transfer, patent information and trade-related IP data not much meaningful progress has been achieved in addressing climate and trade technology transfer agreements. Importantly and to date, the amended TRIPS Agreement applies to 141 members.10 Twenty-five members have yet to accept the Protocol. The current period for accepting the protocol runs until 31 December 2025. Moreover, in the July 2025 meetings of the Committee on Trade and Environment the WTO members have reiterated "their strong engagement to exploring the relationship between trade and the environment during the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE).”11 Whilst at the UNFCCC, the parties are still hesitant to find convergence on trade and climate – as evident by the June 2025 Bonn agenda adoption saga, which saw the Bonn June 2025 meetings’ agenda being delayed due to the developing countries request to give Unilateral Climate Measures with negative cross border impacts specific attention during the UNFCCC’s Bonn 2025 session.
To conclude, meaningful discussion on these areas in both the WTO and the UNFCCC must happen and find convergence. Put simply, it is time that the work of the WTO and the UNFCCC moves away from organisations wanting to protect their own turf and their own goals and instead find convergence to call out the elephant in the room. To forge our global societies sustainable trajectory, we need to leverage the importance of trade for development and climate action for humanity and the environment as a combined good.
Socio-economic development of the Global South must be central to the discussion on how to participate fully, with the necessary support that is committed to delivering fully derived opportunities and benefit from the decarbonisation energy transition, shaping meaningful win-win outcomes. Protectionist and unilateral approaches represent an outdated governance structure that does not speak to our modern society and must be reformed with urgency. Carbon emissions know no borders. The nexus of trade governance and climate commitments is a defining test of our global aspiration to solve complex problems as a unified global society.
The global economic system as it exists must evolve to help address the modern challenges we are faced with, not serve as a foundation for upholding inequality and injustices. If trade is to serve as a conduit rather than a constraint for climate ambition, then principles of equity, access, and mutual benefit must be embedded at the heart of global governance. This is especially critical for developing countries, whose ability to decarbonise depends not only on political will but also on fair access to technologies, finance, capacity-building, and markets. The challenge lies in designing a shared agenda that does not see climate action and economic development as competing priorities but instead as co-dependent imperatives.
The continued legitimacy of the WTO and the UNFCCC will be measured by their ability to enable socio-economic development, deliver a just transition, enforce differentiated responsibilities, and deepen solidarity amongst nations. Moreover, the collaboration and convergence of industrial sectors, in knowledge-sharing, policy alignment and support, from the global North and global South to find mutually advantageous partnerships in the trade and climate nexus might offer our planet the path forging we all need. All eyes will shift to Brazil and Cameroon as we anticipate the UNFCCC’s COP30 and the WTO’s Ministerial Conference 14 with convergence of actors and commitments to necessary support reforms, tangible socio-economic development and climate action.
