화석연료보조금에 관한 국제법 논의

Subsidizing fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas has been accelerating the adverse impacts of climate change and exacerbating air pollution. Many rich countries in the world have provided subsidies for fossil fuel energy consumption and production, which has been far more than for subsidies for renewable energy. Fossil fuel subsidies can be said for government to provide subsidies for climate change and to help human health and life put in danger through air pollution. In particular, fossil fuel production subsidies fix carbon dioxide for a long time, produce “zombie energy” and expand inefficient fossil fuel supply which enhances wasteful consumptions. In this context, although since 2009, G20, APEC and more countries have promised that they would phased down inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, such political promises have not been appropriately implemented so far. This paper therefore discusses the fossil fuel subsidy reform under international law, which have more legal bindingness and implementing forces rather than political pledges. Under the international legal framework, the most promising systems for discussing fossil fuel subsidy reform could be the UNFCCC/Paris Agreement and the WTO/SCM Agreement, even though phasing down the fossil fuel subsidies are explicitly mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goal 12 and in the EU-Singapore FTA. First of all, Paris Agreement can provide suitable mechanisms such as regularly submitting of the NDCs that each party could present its fossil fuel subsidy reform targets together with its GHGs emission targets; making the global financial flow be in line with maintaining average global temperature well below 2℃; treating fossil fuel subsidies with no applicability standing while applying “climate finance”; assessing the fossil fuel subsidy reform through the global stock-taking; including fossil fuel subsidy reform into the long-term low emission strategy that requests for each party by 2050. These related provisions of the Paris Agreement can lead Parties to pursue their fossil fuel subsidy reforms. Paris rule-book and/or the future COP decisions could provide more details for the fossil fuel subsidy reform under the Paris Agreement as long as Parties would agree with such. More importantly, the WTO/SCM Agreement, having more powerful dispute settlement mechanism under the international law than any other, can find that the fossil fuel subsidies by government are inconsistent with the SCM Agreement as long as those subsidies are included in it by definition and requirements. Since the SCM Agreement does not include all sorts of fossil fuel subsidies provided around the world, some WTO Members who believe WTO would/could/should/must play a significant role and be a right forum called for a new negotiation on the fossil fuel subsidy reform within the WTO system based on the previous and the current experiences of agricultural goods subsidies and fishery subsides negotiations. Both the Paris Agreement and the SCM Agreement are not enough to address phasing down the fossil fuel subsidies provided in the world, yet it should be considered more seriously to use the existing system to away from fossil fuels and to transit towards low carbon society.