Collective risk social dilemma and the consequences of the US withdrawal from international climate negotiations
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629819875511 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Author | Oleg Smirnov |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2019, Vol.31(4) 660–676
ÓThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0951629819875511
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Collective risk social
dilemma and the
consequences of the US
withdrawal from
international climate
negotiations
Oleg Smirnov
Stony Brook University, USA
Abstract
International climate negotiations represent an interesting theoretical problem, which can be ana-
lyzed as a collective risk social dilemma as well as an n-person bargaining model. The problem is
made more complicated by politics due to the differences between: (1) total and per capita emis-
sions; and (2) present-day and cumulative emissions. Here, we use a game theoretic approach in
conjunction with the literature on effort-sharing approaches to study a model of climate negotia-
tions based on empirical emissions data. We introduce a ‘fair equilibrium’ bargaining solution and
examine the consequences of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Our
results suggest that the collective goal can still be reached but that this requires additional green-
house gas emissions cuts from other countries, notably, China and India. Given the history of cli-
mate negotiations, it is unclear if these countries will have sufficient political will to accept the
additional costs created by the US defection.
Keywords
Climate change mitigation; collective risk social dilemma; effort-sharingapproaches; fair equili-
brium; Paris Agreement
Corresponding author:
Oleg Smirnov,Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, SBS-7, StonyBrook, New York, USA.
Email: oleg.smirnov@stonybrook.edu
1. Introduction
The Paris Agreement approved on December 12, 2015 by representatives of 196
countries (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference
of the Parties, 2015) signified an important step forward to keeping global warming
under 2°C above pre-industrial levels—a critical temperature increase threshold
identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013). The agreement paves the way
for leaders to make the emissions-reduction pledges that would be necessary for the
world to meet the collective goal—that depending on their nations being willing to
stay committed to matching contributions with their promises. However, on June 1,
2017, the United States President Donald Trump announced that the US would
withdraw from the Paris Agreement (Bordoff, 2017; Liptak and Merica, 2017;
Pickering et al., 2018; Urpelainen and Van de Graaf, 2018). The withdrawal is not
effective until November 2020 according to Article 28 of the Paris Agreement
(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the
Parties, 2015). Exploring the consequences of the US exit is one of the most impor-
tant research questions today (Dai et al., 2018; Nong and Siriwardana, 2018).
What are the prospects of international climate negotiations if the US does not
contribute to the global emissions-reductiongoal? Will such defection derail climate
change mitigation efforts? What would other nations have to do in order to achieve
the collective goal despite the defection by the US?
Here we address these questions using a game theoretic model. Game theory
allows us to model strategic interaction between multiple players. The players are
assumed to be rational, that is, maximizing their payoffs in the game. In equili-
brium, no player has an incentive to deviate from the currently chosen strategy
(Nash, 1950b). In game theoretic terms, climate change mitigation has been
recently seen as a collective-risk social dilemma (CRSD) (Milinski et al., 2008;
Tavoni et al., 2011): the players benefit when the public good is provided but no
player has an incentive to pay the cost associated with that provision. However,
unlike in the famous mode of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968), mutual
defection is not the only equilibrium in the game. In the CRSD model, the players
make contributions to reach a certain threshold—a common goal—and, if they do
so, avoid a high probability of losing all their resources. In a cooperative equili-
brium, the sum of players’ contributions is equal to the threshold and no player
has an incentive to defect and, thereby, to face a risk of total loss (Bynum et al.,
2016; Erev and Rapoport, 1990; Offerman et al., 1998).
In the context of climate change mitigation, national contributions correspond
to cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such contributions are potentially
costly since they may cause higher energy prices, slower economic growth, and
require major immediate investments in alternative energy solutions (Shackleton,
2009). Unlike in the linear public good games, however, the benefit of the individ-
ual contributions can only be obtained if the sum of individual contributions is
large enough to prevent abrupt climate change. If the threshold valueis not reached
then all individual contributions represent a wasted effort.
Smirnov 661
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