Dr. Meng ZHANG is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Business Law, Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM). As an environmental lawyer with interdisciplinary perspective, his postdoc research stands at the interface of environmental law and trade law in the context of climate change, including market-based approaches, trade-related measures, and pricing mechanisms towards climate neutrality. Specifically, Meng’s research during this postdoc position mainly focuses on the legal and policy issues surrounding the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) —— a well-meant environmental unilateral action based on trade-related measures at the border to equalize the carbon costs embedded in EU produced goods and imported goods while ensuring the compatibility to international and multilateral trade rules.

The controversies surrounding the EU’s CBAM proposal raise challenging research questions. Whether is the CBAM a competitive measure, a climate measure, or a protectionist measure? To what extent will this measure impact the current rules-based multilateral trade system? What will be the EU’s ambition and following actions behind the CBAM? And how to interpret the broader geopolitical implications of the EU’s CBAM proposal? Against this background, this postdoc research project aims to figure out how to manage an integrated trajectory of the CBAM design that addresses climate change through trade and economic tools while ensuring the compatibility to the multilateral trade system in a broader geopolitical context. This research on CBAM will be conducted in four tiers from focal dimensions within the law to broader dimensions beyond the law: tier 1 – the justifiability of CBAM rooted in its interlinkage with the EU ETS; tier 2 – concrete ‘legal techniques’ within the CBAM itself; tier 3 – the environment-trade tension surrounding the CBAM; tier 4 – broader geopolitical implications behind the CBAM. Currently, Meng is also writing a book on legal issues of emissions trading, which is planned to be published by Edward Elgar in its ‘Elgar Studies in Climate Law’ series later on.

Before working at Lund University, Meng conducted his PhD study concerning climate law/governance and obtained his PhD degree in Law (environmental law) at the Centre for Environmental & Energy Law, Ghent University (Belgium) in 2021. During his PhD research, he was devoted to the thematic area of law and low-carbon technologies in climate governance in a broader societal perspective. His PhD thesis is entitled ‘Governance of Climate Technologies: the Role of International Environmental Law in Regulating and Facilitating Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)’. His PhD research does not only contribute to the regulation of onshore and offshore climate technology deployments but also addresses human rights concerns along its value chain as well as how to facilitate the development of climate technologies through market-based mechanisms.

In general, as an open-minded specialist for sustainable development law and policy with multi-cultural and diverse academic experiences, Dr. Meng ZHANG’s research interests touch various fields of environmental law and climate governance. And he has been involved in many EU, international and bilateral cooperative research projects regarding sustainable development in Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Germany, China and Australia. His work has been published by many academic publishers such as Springer, Edward Elgar and Routledge. Meng is looking forward to more academic adventures on the way towards a low-carbon world that we can be proud of.

Beyond his current main postdoc position at Lund University, Meng is also an affiliated researcher of human rights and the environment at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI) of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Sweden); a guest researcher for environmental & energy law at the Department of European, Public and International Law, Ghent University (Belgium); and a visiting researcher for climate governance at the Research Institute of Environmental Law (RIEL), Wuhan University (China). Moreover, Meng is a member of the European Environmental Law Forum (EELF), working closely with the European Union Forum of Judges for the Environment (EUFJE), as well as a National Rapporteur for China in the Climate Change Litigation Initiative (C²LI) led by Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (UK).