Environmental Problems and Cooperation Dilemmas

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Environmental Problems and Cooperation Dilemmas
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The Basic Dilemma

• Environmental problems global/transnational
• Decision making vested in nation states
• How do we deal with the mismatch in the scales of
  environmental and decision-making systems?

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Types of Cooperation Dilemmas

• Tragedy of the commons (Garrett Hardin 1968).
• Common resources
• non-excludable (cannot exclude additional users)
• subtractable (use by one actor reduces
  availability to others)
• individual utility of each additional use greater
  than the disutility of overuse, which is shared
  by all. Strong incentives to overuse.

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Tragedy of the Commons

• Each man is locked into a system that compels
  him to increase his herd without limit in a world
  that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward
  which all men rush
• (Hardin 1968, p. 41)

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Commons

• Examples?

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Tragedy of the Commons

• Is it inevitable?
• Hardin yes, logic compelling, look at other
  examples.
• Buck no, communities had rules to manage the
  commons, decline resulted not from unlimited
  access, but from industrial revolution, improved
  agrarian practices, agrarian reform, inequality.
• What do you think?

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The Role of Institutions

• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990)
• Principles of institutional design.
• Rules are devised and managed by resource users.
• Compliance with rules is easy to monitor.
• Rules are enforceable.
• Sanctions are graduated.
• Adjudication is available at low cost.
• Monitors and other officials are accountable to
  users.
• Institutions to regulate a given common-pool
  resource may need to be devised at multiple
  levels.
• Procedures exist for revising rules.

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The Ozone Shield

• -In September 2000, the Antarctic ozone hole was
  the largest ever recorded -- measuring at
  approximately 11 million square miles, roughly
  three times the size of the US
• -Strong cooperation industrialized countries all
  but eliminated the use and production of ODS
• -Ozone hole shrunk somewhat for the first time in
  2002 and 2003.

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Climate Change

• No binding international commitment to reduce GHG
• HGH accumulations goes on at an unprecedented
  rate
• EU countries adopted GHG reduction policies

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Externalities

• Activity within one state affects the environment
  in other states
• Examples?

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The Amazon
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Shared Resources

• Resources that extend across the jurisdiction of
  several states
• Examples?

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The Aral Sea
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Linked Issues

• When environmental regimes have unintended
  consequence on other issues and vise versa.
• Examples?

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Solutions

• Privatization (Hardin)
• Government regulation/ mutually agreed
  coercion. (Hardin)
• Institutions and social capital (Buck, Ostrom)
• Are these feasible in international relations?

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The Role of Institutions

• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990)
• Principles of institutional design.
• Rules are devised and managed by resource users.
• Compliance with rules is easy to monitor.
• Rules are enforceable.
• Sanctions are graduated.
• Adjudication is available at low cost.
• Monitors and other officials are accountable to
  users.
• Institutions to regulate a given common-pool
  resource may need to be devised at multiple
  levels.
• Procedures exist for revising rules.

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But in IR

• Anarchical system no world government
• No adjudication
• Compliance and monitoring voluntary
• Weak weakly developed common values

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Cooperation

• Coordination of polices, rules, and norms by
  national governments.
• International regimes governance without
  government (Oran Young, John Ruggie)

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Conditions for Cooperation

• Repeated interaction
• Hegemonic power
• Institutions information sharing, lower
  transaction cost, credible commitments
• Socialization
• Transnational advocacy coalitions and networks
• Domestic interest

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Instruments

• Framework convention.
• Set of principles, norms, goals and mechanisms
  for cooperation, but no major obligations.
• Protocol
• Specific obligations (most intense negotiations)
• Implementation provisions.
• Reporting monitoring (rare) trade sanctions
  (rare) assistance.
• Norms (soft rules)
• Voluntary codes of conduct
• Public-private partnerships