Do individuals care about fairness in burden sharing for climate change mitigation? Evidence from a lab experiment

One of the reasons for deadlock in global climate policy is countries’ disagreement on how to share the mitigation burden. Normative theory suggests various fairness criteria for structuring burden sharing, most prominently, historical responsibility for emissions, economic capacity, and vulnerability to climate change. Governments have taken up these criteria in their rhetoric at UNFCCC negotiations. I examine whether normative criteria influence individual burden sharing preferences. This bottom-up perspective is important for two reasons. First, it is unknown if governments’ fairness rhetoric matches citizens’ actual preferences. Second, international climate agreements directly affect individuals through domestic policy measures (e.g. energy taxes), and therefore require domestic public support for successful implementation. I conducted two laboratory experiments where participants have to agree on how to share climate change mitigation costs in an ultimatum game. Treatment conditions include differences between proposer and responder in capacity, vulnerability (experiment 1), and historical emissions (experiment 2). Historical emissions are endogenously determined in a prior game. Capacity inequality strongly affects burden sharing, with richer players ending up paying more, and poorer players less. Vulnerability differences reduce the influence of fairness, leading to suggested cost distributions more unfavorable to vulnerable players. However, vulnerable responders still reject many “unfair” offers. Differences in historical responsibility result in cost distributions strongly correlated with players’ relative contributions to climate change. The results suggest that more nuanced consideration of fairness criteria in burden sharing could make ambitious climate agreements more acceptable for reluctant countries and their citizens.     

Activating the legacy motive mitigates intergenerational discounting in the climate game

Climate change will have dangerous impacts on future generations. Accordingly, people in the present have an obligation to make sacrifices for the benefit of future others. However, research on temporal and social discounting shows that people are short-sighted and selfish—they prefer immediate over delayed benefits, and they prefer benefits for themselves over others. Discounting over long-term time horizons is known as intergenerational discounting, and is a major obstacle to climate action. Here, we examine whether persuasive messages that activate the legacy motive—the desire to build a positive legacy—can increase the willingness of current actors to make sacrifices for future generations. Using a climate change public goods game, we find that when the benefits of cooperation accrue to decision makers in the present, high levels of cooperation are sustained, whereas when the benefits accrue to future generations, intergenerational discounting makes cooperation elusive. Crucially, when the legacy motive is activated—by promoting death awareness, feelings of power asymmetry, and intergenerational reciprocity—intergenerational discounting is attenuated, and cooperation is restored. Our results suggest climate action can be fostered by framing climate change as an intergenerational dilemma, and by crafting persuasive messages that activate people’s drive to leave a positive legacy.     

From burden-sharing to opportunity-sharing: unlocking the climate negotiations

In conventional thinking on climate negotiations, traditional fossil fuel-based economic growth is coupled with carbon emissions, thus mitigation has been regarded as a burden on economic growth. The scarcity within the global emission budget and the interpretation of climate change as ‘global public goods’ have led climate change negotiations into a burden-sharing deadlock. However, some recent economics studies suggest that mitigation could actually promote local economic growth opportunities; consequently increasing the incentives for unilateral mitigation actions. This article highlights the implications for the strategies of unlocking the climate negotiations deadlock. Following an explanation of how climate change negotiations have led to a burden-sharing game and have become a deadlock, some new ways of thinking (based on the emerging literature) are used to suggest how mitigation could promote local economic growth.Policy relevanceOne policy implication is the need to change the current mindset in global climate change negotiations. The current framing of burden-sharing can be abandoned in favour of opportunity-sharing. This more positive approach will stimulate progress on climate action. Therefore, green growth should be situated at the heart of post-2020 climate change regime. A new two-track architecture is proposed for achieving the transformation as a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. A lower legally binding target based on equity principles of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) could form a more politically realistic and inclusive basis for participation. To complement this, a green growth club would promote a higher voluntary global ambition and accelerate mitigation.     

Assessment of balanced burden-sharing in the 2050 EU climate/energy roadmap: a metamodeling approach

In this paper we propose a non-cooperative meta-game approach to designing and assessing climate agreements among 28 European countries that will be compatible with the EU 2050 climate target. Our proposed game model is identified through statistical emulation of a large set of numerical simulations performed with the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3. In this game, the players are the 28 European countries, the payoffs are related to welfare losses due to abatements and the strategies correspond to the supply of emission rights on the European carbon market. We show it is possible to design a fair burden-sharing rule that equalizes welfare losses between countries to approximately 1.2 % of their discounted household consumption. The associated European CO₂ price in 2050 reaches $1100, a figure in line with previous studies. Lastly, the paper discusses various implementation issues of these types of negotiations and evaluates the cost of non-cooperation among EU countries.     

Corporate responses to the CDM: the Indian pulp and paper industry

The key outcomes of the 2006 Nairobi Conference on Climate Change are described, with a particular emphasis on adaptation, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the future of the United Nations climate change regime beyond 2012. Based on an analysis of the key issues being negotiated, the Nairobi Conference can be understood as an important step in the larger process towards a future climate change regime. Its significance is in establishing the confidence and trust between the key players that will be necessary for the successful completion of the current phase of negotiations and agreement on the post-2012 climate change regime.     

Delayed action and uncertain stabilisation targets. How much will the delay cost?

Despite the growing concern about actual on-going climate change, there is little consensus on the scale and timing of actions needed to stabilise the concentrations of greenhouse gases. Many countries are unwilling to implement mitigation strategies, at least in the short term, and no agreement on an ambitious global stabilisation target has yet been reached. It is thus likely that international climate policies will be characterized by a high degree of uncertainty over the stringency of the climate objective, and that some countries might delay their participation to global action. What additional economic costs will this delay in the adoption of mitigation measures imply? What would the optimal short-term strategy be given the uncertainty surrounding the climate policy to come? Is there a hedging strategy that decision makers can adopt to cope with delayed action and uncertain targets? This paper addresses these questions by quantifying the economic implications of delaying mitigation action, and by computing the optimal abatement strategy in the presence of uncertainty about a global stabilisation target (which will be agreed upon in future climate negotiations). Results point to short-term inaction as the key determinant for the economic costs of ambitious climate policies. They also indicate that there is an effective hedging strategy that could minimise the cost of climate policy uncertainty over the global stabilisation target: a short-term moderate climate policy would be a good strategy to reduce the costs of delayed action and to cope with uncertainty about the outcome of future climate negotiations. By contrast, failing to curb emissions in the short term imposes rapidly increasing additional costs of compliance.     

Great-power politics,order transition,and climate governance: insights from international relations theory

The complex politics of climate change cannot be properly understood without reference to deeper geopolitical trends in the wider international system. Chief among these is the growing resurgence of ‘great-power politics’ between China and the US, along with failures of socialization and enmeshment into global governance structures in relation to these two powers. Traditional theoretical frameworks have failed to adequately account for these developments. Nonetheless, this current great-power contestation is at the core of an order transition that has prevented the large-scale institutional redesign required to remove deadlocks in existing global governance structures, including climate governance. Examples from the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference provide ample evidence for these claims. The slow progress of the climate change negotiations are due not just to the politics of the issue itself, but to the absence of a new political bargain on material power structures, normative beliefs, and the management of the order amongst the great powers. Without such a grand political bargain, which could be promoted through a forum of major economies whose wide-ranging remit would go beyond single issues, the climate change regime is only ever likely to progress in a piecemeal fashion.

Policy relevance

Despite the achievements of the 2012 Doha Climate Change Conference, the climate negotiations are not on course to limit warming to 2 °C, and thereby avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change. Several factors have been invoked to account for such slow progress: notably, the nature of the climate change problem itself, the institutional structure of the climate regime, and lack of political will among key players. An alternative explanation is proposed such that the failure to seriously address climate change – as well as other global problems – reflects a resurgent meta-struggle between the ‘great powers’ of China and the US over the nature of the global order. Without such a broader understanding of the deeper dynamics underlying the stalemates of the climate change negotiations, there is little chance of turning those negotiations around.     

The politics and policy of carbon capture and storage: Framing an emergent technology

Over the past decade carbon capture and storage (CCS) has attracted increasing international attention as a climate change mitigation option and moved into the center of climate policy debates and negotiations. This special issue of Global Environmental Change brings together leading scholars to analyze the politics, policy and regulation of CCS in cross-country comparisons as well as in a global context. The aim is to contribute on two fronts: first, by applying concepts, theories and methodologies from the social and policy sciences, to elucidate how societies are engaging with CCS as a mitigation option; and secondly, to point toward a future research agenda which, while exploring basic aspects of technology development as situated in a social context, would also be aligned with the needs of the climate and environmental policy community. The contributions address at least one of three inter-related research areas; CCS and the emergence of long-term climate and energy strategies; regulation, policy instruments and public acceptance; and international politics and CCS in developing countries.     

Climate change: long-term targets and short-term commitments

International negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change could take several different approaches to advance future mitigation commitments. Options range from trying to reach consensus on specific long-term atmospheric concentration targets (e.g. 550 ppmv) to simply ignoring this contentious issue and focusing instead on what can be done in the nearer term. This paper argues for a strategy that lies between these two extremes. Internationally agreed threshold levels for certain categories of impacts or of risks posed by climate change could be translated into acceptable levels of atmospheric concentrations. This could help to establish a range of upper limits for global emissions in the medium term that could set the ambition level for negotiations on expanded GHG mitigation commitments. The paper thus considers how physical and socio-economic indicators of climate change impacts might be used to guide the setting of such targets. In an effort to explore the feasibility and implications of low levels of stabilisation, it also quantifies an intermediate global emission target for 2020 that keeps open the option to stabilise at 450 ppmv CO₂ If new efforts to reduce emissions are not forthcoming (e.g. the Kyoto Protocol or similar mitigation efforts fail), there is a significant chance that the option of 450 ppmv CO₂ is out of reach as of 2020. Regardless of the preferred approach to shaping new international commitments on climate change, progress will require improved information on the avoided impacts climate change at different levels of mitigation and careful assessment of mitigation costs.     

从哥本哈根气候变化大会看气候变化谈判的焦点问题及IPCC第五次评估报告的可能作用

从哥本哈根气候变化大会的谈判焦点可以预期,后续国际气候变化谈判的重点将是谈判的基础案文、发达国家在《京都议定书》第二承诺期进一步的量化减排承诺以及长期目标的表述等问题。IPCC第五次评估报告将对以往报告已阐述的科学问题和基本结论加以巩固并提供更有说服力的证据和论据,更加侧重区域问题,增加适应和减缓经济学成本、气候变化与可持续发展等内容的分析。关于气候变化检测和归因、气候变化影响和关键脆弱性、大气温室气体浓度稳定水平、适应的选择及其成本效益、减缓措施的选择和社会经济成本、责任分担机制及公平性等问题的评估结论,将对谈判进程的推进发挥重要作用。     

Proposal for a poverty-adaptation-mitigation window within the Green Climate Fund

The stakes for alleviating poverty and avoiding unbridled climate change are inextricably linked. Climate change impacts will slow down and may even reverse trends in poverty reduction. The pathways consistent with global warming of no more than 2?°C require strategies for poverty alleviation to make allowance for the constraint of low-carbon development. Existing climate funds have failed to target poverty alleviation as a high-priority strategy for adaptation or as a component of low-carbon development. This article proposes a funding window as part of the Green Climate Fund in order to foster synergies targeting greater satisfaction of basic needs, while making allowance for adaptation and mitigation. This financial mechanism is based on indicators of the satisfaction of basic needs and could respond to the claims of the developing countries, which see alleviating poverty as the first priority in climate negotiations. It defines a country continuum, given that there are poor people everywhere; all developing countries are therefore eligible with a mechanism of this sort.

Policy relevance

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for substantial emissions reductions and adaptation strategies over the next decades to reduce the high risks of severe impacts of climate change over the 21st century. Industrialized countries and developing countries alike recognize the need to mitigate climate change and to adapt to it. But they face many challenges that lead to an ‘emissions gap’ between an emissions level consistent with the 2?°C increase limit and the voluntary pledges that they have made thus far in the climate negotiations (United Nations Environment Programme. (2014). The Emissions Gap Report 2014. A UNEP synthesis report). In this arena, many developing countries underline that their first domestic priority is the satisfaction of basic needs. In the run-up to the next climate negotiations at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, the proposed poverty-adaptation-mitigation funding window could contribute to alleviate the conflict between development and climate goals in developing countries. In this sense, it could spur developing countries to integrate more ambitious emissions limitations pledges into their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. This could in turn entice industrialized countries to act similarly. In the end, it could pave the way to an ambitious climate agreement in Paris at COP 21.     

Ethics and public perception of climate change: Exploring the Christian voices in the US public debate

Climate change raises many questions with strong moral and ethical dimensions that are important to address in climate-policy formation and international negotiations. Particularly in the United States, the public discussion of these dimensions is strongly influenced by religious groups and leaders. Over the past few years, many religious groups have taken positions on climate change, highlighting its ethical dimensions. This paper aims to explore these ethical dimensions in the US public debate in relation to public support for climate policies. It analyzes in particular the Christian voices in the US public debate on climate change by typifying the various discourses. Three narratives emerge from this analysis: ‘conservational stewardship’ (conserving the ‘garden of God’ as it was created), ‘developmental stewardship’ (turning the wilderness into a garden as it should become) and ‘developmental preservation’ (God's creation is good and changing; progress and preservation should be combined). The different narratives address fundamental ethical questions, dealing with stewardship and social justice, and they provide proxies for public perception of climate change in the US. Policy strategies that pay careful attention to the effects of climate change and climate policy on the poor – in developing nations and the US itself – may find support among the US population. Religious framings of climate change resonate with the electorates of both progressive and conservative politicians and could serve as bridging devices for bipartisan climate-policy initiatives.     

波兹南会议之后的气候变化政治格局

2008年12月的波兹南会议作为巴厘岛和哥本哈根一次中间会议,既要全面回顾巴厘路线图的执行情况又要为即将到来的哥本哈根谈判作好准备,因此极为重要。发达国家、发展中国家两大谈判阵营,欧盟、美国和"77国集团+中国"三股主要力量围绕长期愿景、减排目标、适应、资金和技术转让等问题谈判激烈。2009年奥巴马执政以来美国与欧盟气候立场逐渐靠拢,新兴发展中大国地位愈发凸显,其他谈判力量也根据自身情况不断作出立场调整。中国在国际气候机制形成和发展中已处于关键位置,如何根据政治格局变化维护发展中国家利益和立场,实现负责任大国形象和国内低碳发展将伴随着整个后京都过程。     

Technology obscuring equity: historical responsibility in UNFCCC negotiations

According to the concept of historical responsibility, the commitments of individual countries to take action on climate change are distributed based on the relative effects of their past emissions as manifested in present climate change. Brazil presented a comprehensive version of the concept to pre-Kyoto negotiations in 1997. The ‘Brazilian proposal’ originally combined several justice principles; however, following referral to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, discussion soon became confined to technical calculations. This case illustrates how disparities in knowledge production and framing can influence the inclusiveness of negotiations. Southern participation in the policy process was restrained due to lack of scientific expertise on the part of Southern countries and due to the non-inclusive biophysical discourse traditionally preferred by Northern policy-makers. The historical responsibility issue became stranded on problems of how to correctly represent physical nature in climate models. This marginalized the original intention that equity should be the guiding principle of the North—South interaction, arguably undercutting a potential angle of approach to advance the climate change negotiations. The article concludes that in the interest of facilitating the North—South dialogue in climate change negotiations, any framing of historical responsibility that excludes equity needs to be redefined.     

Measuring and modeling Russian newspaper coverage of climate change

As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases and a country rich in fossil fuels, Russia plays a crucial role in achieving a comprehensive solution to climate-related challenges. Yet, Russia's official position on climate change has varied considerably since the beginning of global negotiations, with the country playing everything from policy leader to laggard. While there are a number factors that shape domestic policy positions, this study offers a comprehensive investigation of newspaper coverage on climate change in Russia. How have Russian newspapers discussed the issue since the Yeltsin era? We approach this question by compiling the largest data set of Russian newspaper coverage to date, which includes 11,131 climate-related articles from 65 papers over a roughly 35 year period. After introducing a “computer assisted” approach to measure the core themes running through climate change coverage, we statistically evaluate the national- and newspaper-level factors associated with how coverage is framed, focusing attention on 23 high circulation papers over the period from 2000 to 2014. We find that national-level predictors—particularly economic conditions—are highly influential in determining whether climate change is covered and how the issue is framed, while paper-level factors such as the presence of an energy interest and ownership structure also have notable effects. Overall, this study offers a rich data set and useful methods to better understand the drivers of climate communication in Russia.     

The economic impact of climate change in the 20th and 21st centuries

The national version of FUND3.6 is used to backcast the impacts of climate change to the 20th century and extrapolate to the 21st century. Carbon dioxide fertilization of crops and reduced energy demand for heating are the main positive impacts. Climate change had a negative effect on water resources and, in most years, human health. Most countries benefitted from climate change until 1980, but after that the trend is negative for poor countries and positive for rich countries. The global average impact was positive in the 20th century. In the 21st century, impacts turn negative in most countries, rich and poor. Energy demand, water resources, biodiversity and sea level rise are the main negative impacts; the impacts of climate change on human health and agriculture remain positive until 2100.     

Cautionary Tales: Adaptation and the Global Poor

Many who study global change, particularly from industrialized countries, are optimistic about the capacity of agriculture to successfully adapt to climate change. This optimism is based on historic trends in yield increases, on the spread of cropping systems far beyond their traditional agroecological boundaries, and the inherent flexibility of systems of international trade. Analysis of the success (or in rare cases, failure) of adaptation is by analogy—either to analogous socioeconomic or technological change or to short term environmental change. Such studies have been limited to industrialized countries.This paper uses five analogs from developing countries to examine potential adaptation to global climate change by poor people. Two are studies of comparative developing country responses to drought, flood, and tropical cyclone and to the Sahelian droughts of the 1970s and 80s that illustrate adaptations to climate and weather events:. Two address food production and rapid population growth in South Asia and Africa. Three types of adaptive social costs are considered: the direct costs of adaptation, the costs of adapting to the adaptations, and the costs of failing to adapt. A final analog reviews 30 village-level studies for the role that these social costs of adaptation play in perpetuating poverty and environmental degradation.     

The role of non-nation-state actors and side events in the international climate negotiations

United Nations climate change conferences have attracted an increasing number and range of observer participants, often outnumbering national delegates. The interactions between the formal and informal spaces of climate governance at the Conference of the Parties (COP) are explored by investigating why non-nation state actors (NNSAs) attend them and by measuring to what extent official UN Side Events provide relevant information for the formal negotiations. Based on primary empirical research at recent COPs, it is found that 60–75% of Side Events have related directly to items under negotiation in the post-2012 climate negotiations. In this regard, Side Events that facilitate informal exchange between stakeholders not only provide input into the negotiations but also allow issues beyond the realm of the negotiations to be discussed, reflecting the scope of climate change. Although Side Events are an effective forum to exchange ideas and network, their current format and purpose as being events ‘on the side’ does not offer a sufficient framework for coordination between the work of NNSAs and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process.     

Social capital,trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.     

The oil industry and climate change: strategies and ethical dilemmas

This paper explores the different climate change strategies chosen by three major multinational oil corporations: ExxonMobil, TotalFinaElf and BP Amoco. They are referred to, as the ‘fight against emission constraints,’ ‘wait and see,’ and ‘proactive’ strategies, respectively. The justifications given to support these strategies are identified. They cover the business, scientific, political, economic, technological and social dimensions. In a business ethics framework, the issue of climate change brings forth an ethical dilemma for the oil industry, in the form of a tension between profits and CO₂ emissions. The strategies are analysed as three attitudes towards this dilemma: (i) placing priority on the business consequences while weakening the perception that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change; (ii) avoiding responsibility; and (iii) placing priority on the need for a modification of the business process while limiting the negative effect in terms of business consequences. In conclusion, we propose that beyond the ethical issues proper to climate change itself, additional ethical issues are raised if society at large is instrumentalised by an industry in its search for profit. Publicly gauging and valorising the ethical commitment of a corporation appear as ways of inducing more collaborative and proactive attitudes by business actors.