Climate negotiations: identifying key drivers of cooperation - Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment

Cooperation in global commons such as the climate can be analysed with game theory, both theoretically and experimentally.

This work consists of two pillars. First, a systematic exploration of the causes of the slow progress in UN negotiations to reach effective CO2 mitigation, through an extensive survey targeted at climate diplomats. In order to maximise the external validity of the findings, parallel surveys will be undertaken by employing online labour markets, to elicit the general public’s view on the same topics.

Second, smaller groups of individuals will engage in controlled laboratory experiments aimed at isolating the incentives for cooperation in settings that approximate those faced by negotiators. These economic experiments will be calibrated on and informed from the information gathered with the surveys. The design and analysis of the experiments rest on game theory. Appropriate governance solutions will be advanced based on statistical and regression analysis of the data produced with both the surveys and the games.

It is hoped that the two pillars will provide complementary insights, whose comparison should shed new light on how to effectively move away from the current negotiation gridlock.

Publications:

Dietz, S., Marchiori, C., Tavoni, A., 2012. Why do we see unilateral action on climate change? Vox External link to article

Tavoni, A., 2013. Game theory: Building up cooperation. Nature Climate Change 3, pp.782–783. External link to paper

Scott Barrett, Timothy M. Lenton, Antony Millner, Alessandro Tavoni, Stephen Carpenter, John M. Anderies, F. Stuart Chapin III, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Gretchen Daily, Paul Ehrlich, Carl Folke, Victor Galaz, Terry Hughes, Nils Kautsky, Eric F. Lambin, Rosamond Naylor, Karine Nyborg, Stephen Polasky, Marten Scheffer, James Wilen, Anastasios Xepapadeas & Aart de Zeeuw. 2014. Nature Climate Change 4. External link to paper

The co-financing of this research by Enel Foundation (Grant 1-RGI-U885) is kindly acknowledged.