Collective Action on Climate Change: The Logic of Regime Failure

The international climate regime, primarily designed to limit the emissions of pollutants causing global warming, has failed. Why has international cooperation to combat global warming been so difficult, and what factors must change to improve the situation assuming it is even possible? Using Mancur Olson's classical theory of collective action, this article endeavors to explain the failure of the climate regime. Other international environmental agreements and the associated regimes, such as the Mediterranean Action Plan and the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion, demonstrate that collective action to address international environmental problems is possible. Both agreements contain the ingredients that classical theory suggests are necessary to achieve collective action. But the flipside of collective action theorythat collective action in larger groups is very difficult or unlikelycan also apply to international agreements and action on climate change. Despite the Mediterranean and Montreal successes, relatively speaking, and in spite of so much effort over two decades to create an effective climate regime, it is by no means apparent that the elements for success will exist for the foreseeable future. We should expect a continued muddling along that may, at best, reduce slightly-but not reverse-global warming at some point in the relatively distant future. Climate change is with us to stay. It is now patently clear that the world is facing a growing set of environmental dangers. The greatest among them is probably climate change -changes to Earth's climate system, manifested in events such as drought, floods, sea-level rise, major temperature rises in some regions (e.g., the Artic) and potentially precipitous falls in others (e.g., Europe), extinction of species, and spread of pests (to give but a sampling of the myriad * Paul G. Harris is a professor of international and environmental studies and director of the Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His essays on global environmental politics and international ethics have appeared widely in scholarly journals. He is author or editor of several books, including International Equity and Global Environmental Politics (Ashgate), Climate Change and American Foreign Policy (St. Martin's Press), The Environment, International Relations, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Georgetown University Press), International Environmental Cooperation (University Press of Colorado), Global Warming and EastAsia (Routledge), Confronting Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia (United Nations University Press/ Earthscan), and Europe and Global Climate Change (Edward Elgar). NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL adverse impacts of climate change). ' Climate change arises from global warming, which is caused by humankind's pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases (GHGs), notably carbon dioxide coming from the burning of fossil fuels.2 This human-induced global warming was, until recently, viewed as afuture problem. However, there is now a realization that ongoing climatic changes are very probably consequences of global warming.3 The international legal instruments intended to avert dangerous interference with the Earth's climate -the stated aim of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) are increasingly about mitigating that dangerous interference and putting in place mechanisms for adapting to it. International cooperation is required to address climate change because it is caused by pollution originating in countless locations in every country of the world, and its consequences will be so harmful that only with international assistance will the weakest and poorest peoples and states be able to adapt to future environmental conditions. Climate change is a collective action problem par excellence. As Duncan Snidel points out, "The problem of international cooperation is essentially one of collective action applied to the particular circumstances of the international system. " 4 Although there are many constraints that tend to limit collective action, especially among disparate states, there have been a few instances in which international environmental cooperation has been relatively successful. Among these are the Mediterranean Action Plan (Med Plan) for reducing pollution of the Mediterranean Sea and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an agreement for limiting damage to the earth's protective layer of stratospheric ozone. Climate change has required, and will continue to require, similar international cooperation, but on a much greater scale. About two decades ago, governments came to recognize the need for just such cooperation, and in 1992 most of them signed the FCCC. The core objective of the FCCC is stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to 1. See generally INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC), CLIMATE CHANGE 2001: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION, AND VULNERABILITY (2001). 2. See generally INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGE 2001: THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS (2001). 3. Editorial, Climate Change Is All Around Us, NEW SCIENTIST, Mar. 18 2006. 4. Duncan Snidel, Coordination Versus Prisoners' Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation Regimes, 79 AM. POL. So. REV. 923, 923 (1985). [Vol. 47 Winter 2007] COLLECTIVE ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. ' Diplomats subsequently negotiated the Kyoto Protocol to the FCCC, which requires developed country parties to reduce their emissions of GHGs by about five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.6 However, not all developed countries are parties to the Kyoto agreement. Most notably, the United States, the source of about one-quarter of the pollutants causing global warming, has refused to ratify the agreement (although the Clinton administration signed the treaty in 1992) and, over the last half decade under President George W. Bush, has sought to undermine it at every turn. 7 Scientists tell us that emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs must be cut by at least 60 percent just to stabilize their concentrations in the atmosphere and to prevent chaos in the global climate system.8 Yet, even with full implementation as negotiated among the parties, the Kyoto Protocol will result in reductions of well under five percent of parties' emissions because the manner in which parties are allowed to meet their commitments (e.g., emissions trading and land use changes [carbon sinks]) will not in fact result in significant national emissions cuts. The Kyoto Protocol is, at best, a small (but potentially very important) baby step toward greater action. In the meantime, global GHG emissions will continue to rise precipitously, notably because large developing countries (especially China and India), along with the United States, will be increasing their use of fossil fuels as their economies grow. Climate change will continue, virtually unabated, short of new, much more aggressive collective action to reduce GHGs. However, strong signals of the more robust action needed are distinct in their absence. The most that can be expected at present is a muddling along that will, at best, slightly reduce global warming at some point in the relatively distant future. Despite the Kyoto Protocol entering into force in February 2005, the climate regime has been a failure. What explains this failure? Why has international cooperation to combat global warming been so difficult, and what factors must change to 5. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change art. 2, May 9, 1992, available at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf. 6. Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Annex B, Dec. 11, 1997, available at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/ convkp/kpeng.pdf. 7. BRUCE E. JOHANSEN, 1 GLOBAL WARMING IN THE 21sT CENTURY: OUR EVOLVING CUMATE CRISIS 118-24 (2006). 8. World Resources Inst. , The Difficulty of Stabilizing Emissions, in WORLD RESOURCES 1996-97: THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT, available at http://population.wri. org/pubscontent_ text.cfm? ContentlD=792. Some scientists, notably the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Wallace Broeker, argue that GHGs must be brought to zero later in this century. BBC World Service, Global Business, Jan. 2, 2005. NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL improve the situation-or is significant improvement even likely? Using Mancur Olson's theory of collective action (CAT),9 this article endeavors to explain the failure of the climate regime to stabilize, let alone significantly cut, emissions of GHG pollutants. The Med Plan and the Montreal Protocol demonstrate that classical CAT is applicable to international environmental problems. Both agreements contain some of the ingredients that Olson says are necessary to achieve collective action. But the flipside of the theory that collective action in large groups is unlikely also applies to international environmental cooperation. Despite the Mediterranean and Montreal successes (at least compared to climate change), it is by no means apparent that the elements for success will exist for climate change in the foreseeable future. Other theories could be brought to bear, and indeed have been, to show the complex, multi-level factors shaping cooperation on transnational environmental issues, including climate change.1" But even basic attributes of cooperation highlighted by CAT are lacking in the climate regime, while the obstacles highlighted by the theory are manifest. Classical CAT, despite its limits, was enough to predict the failure of climate regime even in its earliest days, and it points to som