Abstract
Lengthy international climate negotiations indicate a great difficulty to agree on a global climate policy. This chapter discusses the prospect of global climate policy in the context of game theoretic literature on international environmental agreements. Since a global authority with power to enforce a global policy is lacking, international policy has to resort to self-enforcing agreements of sovereign nation states. Game theoretic research has shown that this results in a social dilemma with strong incentives to free-ride, and difficulty in achieving cooperation. But it has also outlined possible ways forward that may foster greater participation in an international climate agreement.
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Flachsland, C., Lessmann, K., Edenhofer, O. (2012). Climate Policy in a Decentralised World. In: Edenhofer, O., Wallacher, J., Lotze-Campen, H., Reder, M., Knopf, B., Müller, J. (eds) Climate Change, Justice and Sustainability. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4540-7_25
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