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Abstract
As part of its Green Deal, the European Union has advanced a 'Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism' (CBAM). Reflective of a trend towards greater use of coercive trade measures to advance environmental and other policy objectives, the CBAM would extend carbon pricing to imported goods with the aim of limiting carbon leakage. Theoretical enquiry into this type of policy approach—known as border carbon adjustments (BCAs)—suggests economic and environmental benefits, but typically discounts the role of legal and practical constraints on BCA design and implementation. In this paper, we show why the BCA design commonly featured in past research—basing the adjustment level on default carbon intensities—runs counter to the economic logic of carbon pricing by distorting the incentives for emissions abatement. Requiring producers to demonstrate their actual carbon intensity captures additional economic benefits of carbon pricing and improves the overall legal prospects of a BCA, but adds to its administrative complexity and creates risk of avoidance practices such as 'resource shuffling'. What emerges is a more nuanced understanding of BCAs that highlights the challenges when transitioning from theory to practice.

Pricing carbon to address climate change sparks divisions like few other policy options. From street riots to academic debate, it has stirred both passionate and principled disagreement, leaving scarce room for compromise between advocates and critics. Among scholars, what used to be nearly unanimous support for carbon pricing has ceded way to a more bifurcated landscape. We review the growing literature on carbon pricing shortfalls, and suggest a conceptual framework to differentiate three dimensions of failure, based on different manifestations of human behaviour: Homo Economicus, Homo Irrationalis, and Homo Politicus. We also apply this framework to identify and classify principles to overcome the three dimensions of failure. Our Perspective offers an agent-based view on the constraints that prevent deployment and efficient operation of carbon pricing in practice, and identifies pathways for improved policy design and implementation.

Experts frequently point to carbon pricing as the most cost-effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Empirical studies show that carbon pricing can successfully incentivise incremental emissions reductions. But meeting temperature targets within defined timelines as agreed under the Paris Agreement requires more than incremental improvements: it requires achieving net zero emissions within a few decades. To date, there is little evidence that carbon pricing has produced deep emission reductions, even at high prices. While much steeper carbon prices may deliver greater abatement, political economy constraints render their feasibility doubtful. An approach with multiple instruments, including technology mandates and targeted support for innovation, is indispensable to avoid path dependencies and lock-in of long-lived, high-carbon assets. We argue that carbon pricing serves several important purposes in such an instrument mix, but also that the global commitment to deep decarbonisation requires acknowledging the vital role of instruments other than carbon pricing.

AbstractOur current understanding of so-called "self-contained regimes" is based on an overly simplistic appreciation of how such regimes interact with each other and with the larger body of international law. Drawing on an analysis of WTO case law, this article highlights two distinct normative relations, addressing the relationship of international trade law vis-à-vis general international law and international environmental law. As the analysis reveals, further differentiation of normative relationships is needed to better understand how such seemingly independent regimes operate in a fragmented legal system. It also shows that a recently proposed interpretative tool, systemic integration, raises new questions and challenges traditional conceptions of international treaty law.

Environmental protection has invariably become one of the central challenges facing modern societies and, by extension, their respective states. Constitutionally endowed with judicial powers, states also have a mandate to guarantee the rights and duties arising from legislation on the environment, including, if necessary, their enforcement. In the process, public interest litigation in environmental matters has acquired growing importance as one important means of achieving this objective. By describing the legal framework for public interest litigation, this article seeks to shed light on an important channel of environmental protection in Germany, whose role in countering environmental pollution and other forms of damage to public goods prior to serious and irreversible deterioration has been consistently on the rise. Against this background, the aim of the article is to provide an introduction to German experiences with public interest litigation in environmental matters, both with a view to its success to date and also to more critical aspects.