Abu Dhabi conclave: The WTO must double down on climate talks
In an eerie echo of the protectionist 1930s, globalization has been in retreat this decade amid a fast deepening geopolitical divide. This explains feeble expectations of anything multilateral. So too of the 13th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) being held in Abu Dhabi.
Ever since we lost a flawed but powerful promoter of free trade in the US, which has left the WTO’s dispute-resolving device in limbo since 2019, the cause has dawdled in the doldrums. The real irony of today’s global ‘polycrisis,’ however, hangs invisibly in the stale air around us. Trade talks are caught woefully out of step with the planet’s climate crisis.
While market theory makes a cogent case against price distortions to secure our economic well-being both within an economy and across borders—asking us to squeeze the most out of scarce resources by letting unrigged forces of demand and supply allocate them—it confronts two hard-to-crack nuts: distrust of one another, a classic old rigidity, and the real cost of carbon, adjusted for a global net-zero goal. The WTO must address the latter with utmost urgency. Even as alternate means are sought to resolve trade disputes, time must not be lost on how carbon markets may be globalized.
Indeed, this ought to assume equal priority at this week’s huddle. India’s call for WTO reforms includes seeking two-tier dispute resolution and pushing for the old device’s revival. Since the WTO is based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, for its very basis to be upheld judiciously, the US and others must honour the G20 New Delhi Declaration calling for talks aimed at a “fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024." This deadline, set at
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