The Paris Agreement - Why Trump is Stalling...

Earth’s atmosphere is a ‘global public good,’ that is, it is available to everyone, worldwide.  All states benefit from a stable climate and its use by one state does not diminish its availability for others. 

No single state is responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and no state, acting alone, can reduce the impacts that will be felt as a result of climate change. Koko Warner, co-author of the IPCC Fifth assessment report says, ‘All of our societies will be affected by climate change, there are no exceptions’ (Deutsche Welle, 2014).

Protecting a global public good requires collective action. States need to work together towards a common goal, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stabilise the climate and mitigate the impacts of climate change. This is what the Paris Agreement, an ambitious international treaty aimed at limiting the carbon emissions of 195 countries, aims to do. However the collective decision making required in negotiating international climate treaties faces inherent constraints which have, to date, meant that a binding climate treaty, ratified by all countries, has remained elusive. The Paris Agreement looked set to change all of that but with Trump in power, keen to protect what he sees as key US interests which don't include the fate of the rest of the world, a consensus on how we deal with a warming world seems once again to elude the global community.

Game theory is a useful tool when critically examining the negotiating tactics of countries negotiating climate agreements. This article will examine the methods employed by those countries navigating the process of deciding whether to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol (which the Paris Agreement will replace) and the Copenhagen Agreement (COP15). In addition, it will assess the barriers states face in addressing global climate change policy, consider the role of power and strategic international relationships in climate negotiations and demonstrate why not all states are willing to cooperate with each other. It will also consider what changes could be made to encourage greater cooperation between states in the future, specifically the framing of climate change as a security threat and finally, what the future holds for international climate agreements.

The impacts of climate change together with the costs necessary for adaption and mitigation are unequally distributed around the world. The most significant climate change impacts fall largely on vulnerable states least able to mitigate them. In addition there is disagreement over who is responsible for the current levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere and which countries should bear the burden of paying for adaption and mitigation strategies. There is also the temporal distribution of climate change to consider and the impact on intergenerational equity – inertia in the climate system means future generations will suffer impacts as a result of the activities of current generations. There is disagreement amongst states as to who is responsible for the costs of protecting future generations. Developing countries argue they should not have to pay costs they can ill-afford, to reduce a future burden, when the scale and impacts of climate change are still uncertain and the effectiveness of mitigation and adaption strategies remain unclear. These points are contentious and a barrier to progress in climate negotiations.

Climate change will affect each country differently. In trying to protect their individual national interests, whether economic, development or security interests, states face a conflict between doing what is best for their citizens and doing what is best for society as a whole. The results of such conflicts of interest have been evident at international climate negotiations over the last two decades, which have consistently failed to deliver a wholly international legally binding agreement.

Climate change has been on the international agenda since 1992 when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was launched at the Rio Summit. In 1997, parties to the UNFCCC added the Kyoto Protocol which was the first legally binding agreement to enforce emissions reductions. Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, ultimately ratified by 192 states (UNFCCC, 2014), agreed to reduce their emissions between 2008 and 2013, to an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels. The US did not ratify the protocol and had no obligation to reduce emissions. The US decision not to ratify the protocol is an example of how domestic politics can influence international negotiations. The Clinton administration agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, but the succeeding Bush administration rejected it, much like the Obama administration adopted the Paris Agreement but it is in the hands of the Trump administration to ratify it, making it legally binding.

Examining Kyoto using game theory, specifically the Chicken Game, can help explain the position of the US. The Chicken Game is based on the premise of two drivers who are headed towards a collision with each other. Whoever swerves is considered ‘chicken’ and loses. If nobody swerves, they will both crash and both lose. Applying this theory to the Kyoto negotiations, the US and the EU were on a collision course. The US insisted on a market approach and market solutions for carbon emissions damages, whilst the EU insisted on international regulations and quotas. The position of the US was motivated by the costs of it ‘swerving’. If the US did not ‘swerve’ and instead agreed to regulate its carbon emissions through quotas, it would suffer the economic consequences. Firstly because US industry is heavily reliant on fossil fuels and a move to cleaner technology would be costly. Secondly, it would give emerging countries like China a competitive economic advantage as China was not obliged to cut emissions having been classified as a developing country.  The result was that the US did not ratify the Kyoto protocol. In effect, both the EU and the US were losers. There was no commitment from the US to stabilise its emissions and with the absence of the US as a party to the Protocol, the costs of mitigation became higher for all parties. Perhaps most importantly, the credibility of the Kyoto Protocol was in question because at the time, the US was the worlds’ largest emitter of carbon. The US was a loser because global emissions were not reduced.

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15) provides a good illustration of a Prisoners Dilemma, another game theory model, illustrating various outcomes of strategic decision making inherent in climate negotiations. The Prisoners Dilemma is a paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own best interest pursue a course of action that does not result in the ideal outcome. This is similar to Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ dilemma which arises when several individuals, acting independently and serving their own interests, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource - even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen.

The typical Prisoner's Dilemma is set up in such a way that both parties choose to protect themselves at the expense of the other participant. As a result of following a purely rational thought process and acting in their own self interests, both participants find themselves in a worse state than if they had cooperated with each other in the decision-making process.

Applying this to climate negotiations, the optimum outcome at COP15 would have been for all parties to agree a deal to reduce emissions meaning the impacts of climate change and the costs of mitigation are reduced for all. There is, however, a chance that one country might ‘cheat’.  If one country decides to reduce emissions and the other doesn’t, the country who does not reduce emissions will have gained a competitive advantage, by ‘cheating’. The worst collective outcome would be for all countries to continue on a business as usual trajectory, i.e. to do nothing. This would mean carbon emissions would continue to rise as would the mitigation costs.          

Given this information, why wouldn’t all states cooperate? Although the evidence for climate change is now well established, there remains significant debate over the extent of the impacts of climate change and how much it might cost to mitigate them. Given these uncertainties, there is some disagreement between states over whether it is cost effective to mitigate against climate change at all.

For example, even if all countries agreed to reduce carbon emissions, there is no guarantee their actions would be enough to prevent significant warming. In this situation cooperating countries would suffer the negative effects of climate change yet still be forced to reduce their carbon emissions. This is a key point contested by countries with emerging economies - the so-called BASIC negotiating block that includes Brazil, South Africa, India and China, who argue that a standardised reduction in carbon emissions would inhibit their economic growth and development.  The US argues that China and other developing countries make a significant contribution to emissions and should share the burden of mitigation.

Applying the Prisoners Dilemma principle, the best individual outcome for the USA and BASIC countries would be for each of them to continue to pollution while others cooperate and reduce their emissions. This gives the polluting countries a competitive advantage over other nations who have limited their use of fossil fuels in order to reduce their emissions. They would enjoy the benefits of reduced emissions that other countries have made – this is known as the ‘free-rider’ problem.

For some small, less industrialized nations, free-riding is a logical choice. These countries add almost nothing to emissions reductions. As they contribute little to the problem, their efforts to solve it would be negligible so there is little point in entering to a legally binding treaty to reduce emissions. These countries will, of course, still suffer the impacts of carbon emitted by more industrialised countries.

This is a critical aspect of using the prisoners’ dilemma game to model climate change negotiations. The traditional game assumes that each party faces identical costs and benefits, but in the case of climate negotiations this is not the case. For example, for the G77 group of developing nations, the security implications of climate change were the driving force for reaching an agreement at COP15. Ethiopia, for instance, expressed concern about the impact climate change will have on food prices and their ability to sustain their citizens.  Similarly AOSIS, a group of small island states, risk losing the land they inhabit due to inundation from sea level rise. For G77 and AOSIS members, climate change is not being considered primarily from an economic perspective but rather from a security perspective – there is a very real and immediate threat to the future of these vulnerable states. The G77states and AOSIS states acted together to strengthen their negotiating power and provide a good example of states cooperating for the common good. 

It is worth considering if climate change were reframed as a security threat to all countries, whether it would bolster political will and encourage state leaders to agree a climate treaty. The securitisation of climate change would necessitate urgent action by creating a sense of ‘gravity, purpose, resolve and an imperative to action’ (Aradau, 2009 p195).  However, any attempts to securitise climate change ultimately revert back to the state and there is no reason to believe that attempts to deal with climate change by securitisation would be any less difficult to negotiate on a global platform than the current framework for action. The same sort of problem applies - states are likely to serve their own national interests first, before others.

So why don’t states cooperate more? Why is the US playing hardball once again when there is so much at stake? The simple answer is that they are not obligated to. Local environmental problems, pollution for instance, can be addressed at a state level perhaps through regulation or incentives and enforced by state government. But the international community has no equivalent of a state government to enforce action. Instead, global political authority is dispersed among all states in an international system known as anarchy. This fragmentation of power and responsibility is a significant limitation to climate negotiations.

When states do work together, collective action can be effective. For instance the EU states had a mutual interest in regulating carbon emissions through quotas at Kyoto. The BASIC countries found common ground and stood up to the leadership of a dominant country (the US). The G77 and AOSIS groups stood together at Copenhagen in response to the shared (although different) threats to security their countries face as a result of climate change.

The general logic of game theory still applies with regard to the incentives for international cooperation. But the logic is vastly complicated by the high number of countries involved, the differences between economically developed and developing countries, existing global geopolitical divisions, the lack of scientific certainty regarding the costs of mitigation, and the unequal incentives for the negotiating parties. International cooperation could perhaps be strengthened by framing the climate change debate as a global security threat but there is no reason to believe that states would not continue to act in their own best interests.

Perhaps the way forward is for states to focus on what they have in common – a shared and escalating threat, rather than their differences.

REFERENCES

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BBC News (2009) ‘Why did Copenhagen fail to deliver a climate deal?’ [online] available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8426835.stm [accessed 27th March 2014]

Brown W (2009) ‘Collection Action or collective failure? The international politics of climate change ’ in Blowers, A. and Humphreys, D. (eds), 2009,  A Warming World, Milton Keynes, Open University.

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De Koning, P (2010) Stanford Journal of International Relations ‘COP15: climate change and international security’ [online] available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/COP15_11.2.pdf [accessed 2nd April 2014]

Deutsche Welle (2014) ‘Climate change can affect all of us’ [online] available at http://www.dw.de/climate-change-can-affect-all-of-us/a-17529180 [accessed 3rd April 2014)

Humphreys, D (2009) ‘The role of science in climate change policy’ in Blowers, A and Humphreys, D (eds), 2009, A Warming World, Milton Keynes, Open University.

Zammit-Lucia, J (2013) COP19: the UN's climate talks proved to be just another cop out [online] available from http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/cop19-un-climate-talks-another-cop-out [accessed 4th April 2014].