Cooperation and discord in global climate policy

Effective mitigation of climate change will require deep international cooperation, which is much more difficult to organize than the shallow coordination observed so far. Assessing the

prospects for effective joint action on climate change requires an understanding of both the structure of the climate change problem and national preferences for policy action. Preferences

have become clearer in light of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in December 2015. Although deep cooperation remains elusive, many partial

efforts could build confidence and lead to larger cuts in emissions. This strategy of decentralized policy coordination will not solve the climate problem, but it could lead incrementally to

deeper cooperation.

We thank T. Dietz, M. Lane, J. Schot, R. Socolow, B. Sovacool, P. Stern and A. Underdal for comments, S. Solomon and M. Oppenheimer for related conversations, and L. Wong for research

assistance. R.O.K. is supported by Princeton University. D.G.V. is supported by UC San Diego, the Electric Power Research Institute, The Brookings Institution and the Norwegian Research

Foundation.

Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, 408 Robertson Hall, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive 0519, La Jolla, 92093, California, USA

Global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability, World Economic Forum, 91–93 route de la Capite, 1223, Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland

The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, 20036, Washington DC, USA

R.O.K. and D.G.V. contributed equally to conceiving the article, the analysis and writing.

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: