The Australian government has decided to adopt a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2010 to save the tuna industry from collapsing. Even the US Congress is also debating legislation that would impose a mandatory cap-and-trade program for US greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union has had a regional emissions trading scheme in place since 2005. The Garnaut Climate Change Review has recommended that such a system be implemented ahead of a comprehensive global agreement.
It is said that these various programmes aim to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the production cost of carbon-intensive goods. The poor countries are expected to implement domestic climate change measures in advance of an international agreement must face the serious prospect of cheaper imports of the same goods from countries with no system of emission reduction.
It is said that the plan might damage tuna industry so the American authority is planning a law designed to tackle incidental harvesting of dolphin by tuna fishing, a trade tribunal decided that measures directed to production processes do not affect the characteristics of the product at issue. The US has decided to restrict imports of “dolphin unfriendly” tuna was ultimately found to be in breach of the obligation of non-discrimination.
Therefore a domestic environmental measure may not be applied in a manner that would constitute “arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination” between different countries. The EU’s contemplated system will need to take into account the extent to which different countries contribute to global carbon emissions.
