PLES has hosted the second seminar of “Responding Strategies of Law and Policy - Sustainable Environmental Regulations under Climate Change” at Multimedia Room of Tsai Lecture Hall on May 12, 2012. Here is the summary of the third session of the seminar.

This seminar was hosted by Professor Chien-Liang Lee of NTU College of Law. Associate Professor Wen-Chen Chang began with the presentation of “The global Practice of Including Climate Change into Environmental Effect Assessment: Comparative Analysis of the Driving Force” as the topic. Associate Professor Chang started from article 4 of UNFCCC, saying that according to this article, all parties should “take into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances,” and further examine how and why each nation include climate change variables into environmental assessment. While UNFCCC hasn’t made it a compulsory regulation, countries in Europe, America, Asia, and Pacific Island has included climate change variables into environmental assessment. Associate Professor Chang further pointed out from the perspectives of internal country and international drive forces to analyze the reason behind. Associate Professor Chang addressed that, with all the nations, America and Australia are the countries which systematically enforcing the climate change variables into environmental assessment, with the driving forces from inside of the countries instead of the outer international influences. With the driving force that came from inside of a country, the judiciary, administration, and legislation could work together in the application of environmental assessment in the U.S. and Australia. Geographical and commercial reasons are also important for environmental assessment in Iceland, the Netherlands, and those North European and Southeastern countries. In retrospect of the unsuccessful practice in Taiwan, Professor Chang has pointed out that the limitation of what Taiwan faced in international politics are not necessarily negative. We should focus on judicial litigation, legislation and administrative lobbying as the active actions in bringing the changes for future trend of climate change policy. While Professor Chang provided the aspect of a global observer, panelist Assistant Professor Ying-Lei Chang offered a perspective from micro-observation, giving further insights for the research.

The second part of the seminar was spoken by Associate Professor Hsu, Yao-Ming, presenting the topic of “EU Climate Change Regulations and Legal system and the Consistency with WTO legal system.” The large scale of climate change issues has brought the adaptations for international regulatory management.  European Union is one of the most successful supernational organizations with the fundamental focus of economic cooperation, their efforts are highly important in the fields of research and practices when it comes to the development of climate change policies, and the practices within the global management systems. Associate Professor Hsu first analyzed EU’s policies and actions in the systematic and regulatory portion, and provided his concern regarding energy, GHG emission and carbon trade system. While the climate change policies are highly relevant with the issues of economic development, the tension emerges and needed to be taken care of between EU’s tough environmental strategies and the free trade design of the WTO. The confrontation between these the environmental policies and WTO regulations is mainly the recognition standard of like products and whether the environmental regulations could legitimately make the exception under GATT regulations. The seminar ended with commentator Assistant Professor Yi-Yuan Su reviewing relevant cases regarding the dynamics between internal constitutions, WTO regulations, and EU law.