ENDING TRADE ATTACKS ON CLIMATE POLICIES
The need for bold action to address the climate crisis has never been clearer. Instead, international trade agreements are increasingly being used by both governments and individual corporations to attack and discourage new climate policies. These trade attacks on climate action must end now!
In the face of the clear and growing threat that climate change poses to ourselves, our communities and future generations, governments cannot allow unjust and outdated corporate-centered trade rules to stand in the way of ambitious climate initiatives.
Global Exchange, together with the Trade Justice Education Fund, calls on governments to immediately:
1) Eliminate Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) from existing trade and investment agreements, and commit not to enter into any new agreements containing ISDS.
2) Enact a Climate Peace Clause under which they agree not to use state-to-state dispute settlement mechanisms in trade and investment agreements to attack one another’s climate and clean energy transition policies.
3) Acknowledge that Global North countries most responsible for climate change — including the United States, Canada, European Union and others — owe a debt to the world that must be repaid, including, in part, with the inclusion of technical assistance, financing and/or the transfer of green technologies in international agreements.