Climate change mitigation: a role for climate clubs?

Abstract

The limited success of the UNFCCC negotiations has enticed scholars, environmentalists, and policymakers alike to propose alternative approaches to climate cooperation. This article reviews the scholarly literature concerning one such proposed alternativeclimate clubs. According to the club approach, it would be promising to start with small groups of "enthusiastic" countries. These countries would outline what they are willing and able to do, conditional on what other enthusiastic countries offer and implement. Moreover, these enthusiastic countries would try to entice "reluctant" countries to join via "exclusive and contingent" measures. Focusing on the conditions for a climate club to effectively reduce global emissions, we organize our review around four main questions: first, what is a climate club's potential for providing benefits that accrue exclusively to club members? Second, how might leadership influence a climate club's ability to eventually become effective? Third, what insights can the formal modelling literature offer concerning the effectiveness of climate clubs? Finally, which is the empirical record of existing climate clubs? We conclude by providing several suggestions for future research.Background, aims and plan

The prospects for Paris: behavioral insights into unconditional cooperation on climate change

“…Considering such non-pecuniary concerns, individual incentives might be more aligned with collective interests than presumed in the standard game-theoretic framework. The notion that some parties may act unilaterally is particularly relevant in a repeated context like climate change because previous studies suggest that initial actions can facilitate reciprocal actions by others (Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981;Arce, 2001) and the formation of willing groups or climate clubs (Victor, 2011;Hovi et al, 2016).…”

Climate Change and International Relations (After Kyoto)

“…A third area focuses on describing and explaining institutional interplay and dynamics of regime complexes (Keohane & Victor 2011, Oberthür & Stokke 2011. Fourth, we see more sophisticated use of the methodological repertoire of social science, including qualitative comparative analysis (Stokke 2012), statistics (Spilker & Koubi 2016), game theory (Barrett 2003), and agent-based modeling (Hovi et al 2016). …”

“…On the positive side, climate change is not such that the weakest link determines the outcome. Several studies, using computer simulations or field experiments to compensate for scarce empirical evidence, report that an initially small group of concerned and powerful states can -under favorable circumstances -grow and significantly enhance its collective-action capacity either by providing exclusive benefits to other countries that join the club (Hovi et al 2016, Saelen 2015 or by sanctioning those who do not join (Nordhaus 2015).…”

“…An instructive illustration of the importance of one of these assumptions can be found by comparing Nordhaus (2015) and Hovi et al (2016). Nordhaus adopts a top-down approach, assuming that the club regime already exists and has been "optimized to attract large numbers of participants and attain high levels of abatement, and then countries decide whether or not to join" (Nordhaus 2015(Nordhaus , p. 1344.…”

“…He finds that even small trade penalties on non-participants can induce a large and stable coalition to form and achieve high levels of abatement. By contrast, Hovi et al (2016) start by building a climate club bottom-up and exploring how different types of incentives -notably club goods, conditional commitments, and side payments -may be used by a small group of enthusiastic and powerful founders to attract initially more reluctant members. Unsurprisingly, their findings are less optimistic than those reported by Nordhaus.…”