Global climate Control

This paper considers whether international environmental public goods provision, such as mitigation of climate change, is better dealt with through regional cooperation than through a global treaty. Previous research suggests that, at best, a global environmental treaty will achieve very little. At worst, it will fail to enter into force. Using a simple dynamic game-theoretic model, with weakly renegotiation-proof equilibrium as solution concept, we demonstrate that two agreements can sustain a larger number of cooperating parties than a single global treaty. The model provides upper and lower bounds on the number of parties under each type of regime. It is shown that a regime with two agreements can Pareto dominate a regime based on a single global treaty. We conclude that regional cooperation might be a good alternative–or supplement–to global environmental agreements.

Keywords

• Climate change;
• International environmental agreements;
• Regional cooperation;
• The Kyoto Protocol;
• Non-cooperative game theory;
• Public goods;
• Weak renegotiation proofness

• Global climate change Topics
• Global climate change Data
• Global climate change map