WTO DG Discusses Trade Tools to Be Used in Climate Fight
World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala voiced the WTO's support of the Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches, the WTO said. Speaking Feb. 9 at the forum's launch at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the DG said the global trade body is ready to aid the new initiative and ensure a wide group of stakeholders join together to address climate change.
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Okonjo-Iweala noted trade tools that can be used to help achieve a transition to net-zero emissions, including improving transparency, lowering trade barriers on green goods and services, and eliminating climate-unfriendly distortions such as fossil fuel subsidies.
"To keep the world pulling together on climate action, advanced, emerging, and developing economies will need to find ways to coordinate across divergent national policies," Okonjo-Iweala said. "Coordination in turn will rest on data and shared understandings about the impacts of different policies. That's why this forum matters. ... As governments begin to get serious about decarbonizing our economies -- better late than never -- we need to maximize the positive cross-border spillovers of their climate change policies, while minimizing the negative spillovers. We cannot do this without cooperation on trade. The WTO stands ready to play its part in working with you in this forum and elsewhere."