Stimulating climate smart agriculture within the boundaries of international trade law

The Paris Agreement implies that comprehensive policies aimed at climate smart agriculture, i.e., reducing emissions from agriculture, increasing sequestration through agriculture and land use, and increasing resilience of the agricultural sector need to be developed and implemented soon. This article reviews the boundaries international trade law imposes on the most common domestic and regional instruments aimed at stimulating climate smart agriculture: subsidies, and offset schemes under a carbon pricing mechanism. It finds that the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures set limitations to the use of these instruments and calls for creating more room for manoeuvre for domestic policymakers.