COP27: WTO launches report on trade as cornerstone for climate action

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has launched a report on how adopting international trade policies into national climate plans can improve global efforts to address climate change.

The report, which was released on November 7, was presented by Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela, WTO director-general, at a high-level event for world leaders at COP27.

The organisation, through its website, reiterated the need for the report, saying it “emphasises that international cooperation on trade-related aspects of climate policy is vital for making climate actions more effective, and the low-carbon transition more just, minimising trade frictions and investor uncertainty.”

“The report shows that, without global cooperation on ambitious climate policies, the world will not achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius,” the report stated.

Presenting the report, Okonjo-Iwela said it shows that trade is useful for achieving climate goals and part of the solution for achieving a low-carbon, resilient and just transition.

She added that the non-inclusion of trade in national climate plans could be a restriction to countries succeeding on adaptation, adding that the report recommends policies that can be adopted by countries.

“With all these announcements of financing, I’m sure people are wondering what the world trade organisation is doing. We don’t have money to announce, but I do want to say how pleased I am hearing the new commitments that are being made to this project,” she said.

“It’s really made me glad, congratulations to you partners and all the donors that are stepping forward, I think this is fabulous. We need to recognise that whilst financing is very very important, trade policy can block everything.

“And this was the lesson we should have learnt with what happened with the pandemic. There were times when even for Africa, COVAX was saying ‘we have money to purchase vaccines’ but what happened? With all the money in the world, you couldn’t access the vaccines because there were trade policies, trade restrictions and prohibitions both on the import for manufacturing the vaccines and the export of the finished products that didn’t allow the money to work.

“So I just want to tell everybody that by leaving out trade policy from what is being done on the climate side is a big missing piece and this why the WTO has noticed that it has done this piece of work on climate change.

“What this does is that it recommends the policies that countries need to put into their nationally determined contributions and action plans to support adaptation, not just mitigation but also adaptation, policies they could adopt.

“So we want to recommend this. We believe strongly that trade can lower the cost of adaptation in Africa. It can drive development and poverty reduction and positively impact the lives of Africans. It can do this by helping to deploy the necessary technologies that are needed, the necessary goods that need to flow. To open a free flow of trade is absolutely essential if you’re going to succeed in adaptation.”