The EGA Negotiations: why they are important, why they are stalled, and challenges ahead

Jaime de Melo and Jean-Marc Solleder

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Abstract: Decade-long negotiations on the reduction of tariffs on Environmental Goods (EGs) at the Doha Round using a list approach to define EGs, failed to produce an agreement. In July 2014, 14 countries entered plurilateral negotiations under the ambit of the WTO. If successful, the resulting Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) would have eliminated tariffs on a list of EGs. These negotiations broke down in December 2016. The chapter documents this episode and the mercantilistic behavior of negotiators that prevented agreement on an extended list of EGs, a requirement to conclude a meaningful outcome for the environment. A conclusion of the EGA negotiations under the current narrow agenda focusing only on tariffs could help build trust to go further but would be insufficient to help mitigate climate change, even if a ‘critical mass' were to be reached allowing extension of the tariff reductions to all WTO members. This is because average tariffs for the negotiating group are too low (1.5 percent). Extending the agenda to include Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and Environmental Services (ESs) remains the acid test for an EGA to address meaningfully the climate change challenge. Reaching agreement on how to tackle NTBs and ESs will require delegating negotiating authority to ‘independent' scientific experts and probably modifying WTO rules.

Date: 2018-10-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Published in 2018

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Working Paper: The EGA Negotiations: why they are important, why they are stalled, and challenges ahead (2018)
Working Paper: The EGA Negotiations: why they are important, why they are stalled, and challenges ahead (2018)
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