Short Abstract

CBAM is reshaping trade and climate governance, raising questions of power, agency, and justice for the Global South. This panel explores exclusion risks, digital inequalities, and how AI-enabled carbon tools could enable fairer, more inclusive low-carbon futures.

Description

As global climate policy enters a new phase of enforcement, mechanisms like the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) are reshaping trade, industrialisation, and environmental governance. While designed to ensure fairness and prevent carbon leakage, CBAM raises profound questions about power, agency, and futures in the Global South. For firms in the global south, especially SMEs, the CBAM presents both exclusionary risks and transformative opportunities. Compliance demands digital infrastructure, emissions data, and certification systems that many exporters currently lack, exposing deep structural inequities. Yet, emerging technologies such as AI-driven carbon accounting and digital MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification) platforms offer new forms of agency tools that could democratise participation in low-carbon trade if ethically governed. This interdisciplinary panel reimagines development through the lens of carbon governance, bringing together scholars of international political economy, ethics, and sustainability transitions. It interrogates how CBAM redistributes power between North and South, how firms in the global South negotiate agency within emerging climate regimes, and how technologies can mediate more inclusive futures. By centring ethical and justice-oriented frameworks, the session advances a critical conversation about who gets to participate in the green transition and on what terms.

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