Commodity exports and transboundary atmospheric impacts: regulating coal in an era of climate change

Abstract

Do exporters of coal have a responsibility for the carbon emissions associated with the commodity’s end use? Situated within longstanding debates on whether and to what extent environmental objectives should be integrated with trade policy, theories of economic statecraft and international regimes, along with a preliminary survey of the structure of world coal production and trade, are employed to show that coal exporters possess a theoretical capacity to exercise significant price and supply based leverage over coal importers. Utilising this potential leverage, and deployed within the international climate regime, a coal export safeguard regime (modelled on the uranium export safeguard regime) provides coal exporters with a viable policy framework to minimise end-use risks associated with coal exports, while balancing policy demands of retaining the viability and global market share of national coal industries.

Keywords:

• coal
• climate change
• exports
• trade policy

Notes

1. Russia, Iran, Qatar, Nigeria, Venezuela, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago, Equatorial Guinea.