Trade and climate policy, explained

Climate policy and trade policy used to be discussed in separate rooms. Today they are tangled together: carbon prices affect what countries export, border measures affect how climate policy is designed, and trade rules shape what governments are allowed to do.

These explainers untangle the main ideas, one question at a time.

Illustration: a container ship crosses a dashed border line between a coast with a factory and a coast with a town. One container carries a carbon tag at the border. Above the scene, a green strand and an amber strand twist around each other from one side to the other, standing for trade and climate.CO₂

The explainers

  1. Border measures

    What is border carbon adjustment?

    Border carbon adjustment explained: what it is, why governments consider it, how it can be designed, the trade law questions it raises, and the EU's CBAM as an example.

  2. Emissions

    Carbon leakage explained

    What carbon leakage is, the channels through which it can happen, the pollution haven debate, how leakage is measured, and the policy options for addressing it.

  3. Markets

    Trade and sustainable markets

    How sustainability standards, eco-labels and certification shape international trade, what they can and cannot do, and the questions they raise for producers in exporting countries.

  4. Rules

    The WTO and the environment

    How World Trade Organization rules deal with environmental measures: non-discrimination, the general exceptions, technical regulations, subsidies, transparency and ongoing discussions.

How these explainers are written

Each page starts from the question a newcomer would ask, defines the terms, and sets out the main policy options and the arguments for and against them. Where rules or figures change often, we describe how things work rather than quoting numbers that may be out of date. For current legal texts, always check the official sources of the institution concerned.