Beyond the Brussels Carbon Order: Rebalancing Global CarbonPolitics, Trade Justice, and the Right to Development
Abstract
The European Union has converted domestic climate ambition into a form of global regulatory power through the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). This qualitative literature review examines whether that emerging Brussels-centred carbon order can remain environmentally effective and politically legitimate when its adjustment costs are disproportionately borne by developing economies. Drawing on journal literature published mainly since 2020, the article synthesizes scholarship on global carbon politics, the Brussels Effect, carbon leakage, border adjustment, deforestation-free supply chains, climate justice, and the right to development. It finds that EU instruments can stimulate cleaner production and improve supply-chain transparency, but also transmit measurement, reporting, verification, traceability, certification, and financing costs down value chains in regressive ways. These effects can operate as non-tariff barriers even when the measures pursue legitimate environmental objectives and are formally imposed on EU importers. Palm oil illustrates the problem clearly: although palm oil is not a CBAM commodity, EUDR and related European sustainability rules can exclude smallholders whose environmental performance may be acceptable but whose land records, geolocation data, or chain-of-custody systems remain incomplete. The article argues that durable global carbon governance requires more than unilateral diffusion of European rules. It proposes an inclusive compact based on co-design, differentiated obligations, recognition of equivalent policies, revenue recycling, technology transfer, smallholder-centred traceability, and accessible review mechanisms. Climate leadership will command followers only when decarbonization is aligned with distributive justice and credible development pathways.