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The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), along with Columbia Law School's Environmental Law Society and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, welcomes Dan Esty who will explain his argument that THE single most significant point of policy leverage for a ramped-up global response to climate change and a sustainable future more generally would be a revitalized and restructured trade system capable of delivering the technologies, goods, and services required for a green transition at speed and scale across the world – as spelled out in this Fortune article. While on public service leave from Yale over the past two years and working at the World Trade Organization at the request of Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on a sustainability agenda for the trade system, he developed with a network of colleagues across the world the Villars Framework for a Sustainable Trade System (Policymaker's Summary available here). Centered on a revised WTO approach to government subsidies (See this Journal of International Environmental Law article for more details); a pathway to sustainability standards (such as the European Union’s CBAM) that are seen as scientifically based, analytically rigorous, and legitimate; and a new strategy for ensuring that developing countries are brought into the sustainability conversation on an equitable basis, this WTO reform agenda would better align the trade system with the world community’s commitment to ramped-up climate change action and faster implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Pizza lunch will be provided.
Dan Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with primary appointments in the Schools of Law and the Environment, and secondary appointments in the Schools of Management and Global Affairs. He has authored or edited 14 books, including Green to Gold and A Better Planet, and numerous articles on climate change, sustainability, corporate strategy, and trade. Professor Esty served in several leadership roles in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1989-93) and was on the U.S. delegation that negotiated the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. From 2011 to 2014, he was Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. He recently spent two years on public service leave from Yale at the World Trade Organization —helping WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to develop a sustainability agenda for the trade system. He co-leads the Remaking Trade for a Sustainable Future Project.