Where No Man Has Gone Before: The Future of Sustainable Development in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and New Generation Free Trade Agreements

• Main Author: Hush, Emily
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Columbia University Libraries 2019
• Subjects: Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjel/article/view/3741

It is no secret that the planet is warming and that humans have had something to do with it. Over the last one hundred and fifty years, the global average concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased to unprecedented levels and continues to rise. As the climate becomes warmer, the world will face ocean acidification, sea level rise, decreasing biodiversity, and more extreme weather events. At the end of the twentieth century, many nations recognized that climate change is a global phenomenon requiring cooperative action, and began to seek international solutions to prevent disastrous warming and to mitigate unavoidable impacts. Sustainable development is central to this international response to climate change. International agreements like the United Nations Framework on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement are indispensable to furthering sustainable development worldwide. However, the complexity of such large multilateral agreements presents a barrier to effective negotiations. The Paris Agreement boasts one hundred and ninety-seven parties. Because the needs and interests of nation-states are so varied, achieving consensus among many participants leads to either less binding or less ambitious agreements. For example, the emissions reduction commitments (“nationally determined contributions”) made by the Paris signatories are technically binding, but toothless, because the Agreement does not provide any enforcement mechanisms. Yet, even if every nation fulfills its commitment, we will fail to reach the Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius. One way to strengthen consensus among many nations is to build on smaller coalitions and partnerships. For example, the forty-four states and observers that make up the Alliance of Small Island States leveraged their joined voices to obtain the inclusion of an additional 1.5 degrees Celsius goal in the Paris Agreement. Similarly, bilateral free trade agreements (“FTAs”) provide important opportunities for aligning ...