Urs Steiner Brandt

Hot air in Kyoto, cold air in The Hague—the failure of global climate negotiations

Abstract Why did the climate negotiations in The Hague fail? Our contribution is to argue that the conflict between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) stems mainly from disagreement on the cost issue. We argue that the three main concerns promoted by the EU in The Hague. First, a 50% national emission ceiling (the supplementarity principle), second the use of carbon sinks, and third an international market control system. These issues can be solved by removing all restrictions on free greenhouse gas (GHG) trade and by establishing the World Trade Organization as an international authority. The US will face considerably higher costs than foreseen at the negotiations in Kyoto and will have strong incentives to free ride. Our main hypothesis is that the EU proposal on supplementarity made the US turn to free riding. Thus, to make the US stay in an international GHG emission-trading scheme, the EU must reconsider and acknowledge US claims for cheaper reduction options and the right to trade ‘hot air’. This point is important. If the US does not participate, the increase in emissions will be much higher than the emission reduction following the EU supplementarity proposal.

Is local participation always optimal for sustainable action? The costs of consensus-building in Local Agenda 21

Is local participation always optimal for sustainable action? Here, Local Agenda 21 is a relevant case as it broadly calls for consensus-building among stakeholders. Consensus-building is, however, costly. We show that the costs of making local decisions are likely to rapidly exceed the benefits. Why? Because as the number of participants grows, the more likely it is that the group will include individuals who have an extreme position and are unwilling to make compromises. Thus, the net gain of self-organization should be compared with those of its alternatives, for example voting, market-solutions, or not making any choices at all. Even though the informational value of meetings may be helpful to policy makers, the model shows that it also decreases as the number of participants increase. Overall, the result is a thought provoking scenario for Local Agenda 21 as it highlights the risk of less sustainable action in the future.

Illegal Landings: An Aggregate Catch Self-Reporting Mechanism

To solve the problem of illegal landings this article proposes a new tax mechanism based on the regulators own aggregate catch estimates and ex ante self-reports of planned catch by fishermen. We show that the mechanism avoids illegal landings while ensuring (nearly) optimal exploitation and generating (nearly) correct entry and exit incentives. Finally we simulate the mechanism for the Danish cod fishery in Kattegat to obtain a rough indicator of the size of the tax. It turns out that the average tax payment as a percentage of profit is surprisingly low. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Rent-Seeking and Grandfathering: The Case of GHG Trade in the Eu

The EU Commission has recently proposed a new directive establishing a framework for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading within the European Union. The idea is to devalue part of the emission quotas in circulation by the year 2012 at latest, so that the EU will meet its Kyoto target level of an 8% GHG reduction. Our main question is whether the final choice of allocation rule can be explained by the role of industrial groups in the policy making process. We answer this question by using rent-seeking theory and by analysing the Green Paper hearing replies from the main industrial groups. In other words, we want to explain and observe how rent-seeking (or lobbyism) affects the design of environmental regulation and energy policy in favour of well-organized industrial interest groups. We argue that some firms are likely to reap a net gain from being regulated by a grandfathered emission trading system. This is so because total costs of emission reduction and lobbyism are likely to be smaller than the total rents from having this type of regulation.

Climate change and coastal aquaculture farmers’ risk perceptions: experiences from Bangladesh and Denmark

This paper addresses the issue of risk perception in relation to climate change threats, comparison of risk perceptions in two different regions, and derives general results of what affect peoples’ level of risk perceptions. Revelation of individual risk perception is essential for local acceptance and cooperation. We do this by a comparative study with Bangladesh shrimp farmers and Danish mussel farmers. Since these people live on the edge of subsistence, already small changes in the climate will affect them significantly. Farmers in both developed and developing economies are concerned about global climate change but there are significant differences in farmers’ perceptions of the causes of global climate change in developed and developing countries.

The Politics of Persuasion

The EU is at a crossroads. Should it choose the path towards protectionism or the path towards free trade? This book convincingly argues that lobbying regulation will be a decisive first step towards fulfilling the European dream of free trade, in accordance with the original purpose of the Treaty of Rome. Without the regulation of lobbyists to try and prevent undue political persuasion, there is a greater risk of abuse in the form of corruption, subsidies and trade barriers, which will come at the expense of consumers, tax payers and competitiveness.

Trawling for subsidies: the alignment of incentives between fishermen and marine biologists

In the fishing industry, fishermen traditionally have incentives to signal too many fish in the sea in order to have access to a high short-term catch level and subsidies, whereas marine biologists have incentives to signal too few fish in the sea. Marine biologists have an incentive to maximize their budgets both for altruistic reasons (to restore fish stocks) and for private reasons (by increasing demand for their services). We analyse the outcome of a game where the biologists and the fishermen are informed about the true stock size while the decision-maker is not. Our model shows that interest groups, traditionally perceived as opponents, may have mutual interests. Solving the current deadlocks in the EU fishery negotiations highlights the need to reveal the true incentives that motivate stakeholders, such as the symbiosis and alignment of interests identified here.

The implication of extreme events on policy responses

This paper considers a situation where a real risk exists that requires precautions, but the public mostly experiences the risk through infrequently occurring extreme events; this type of risk includes risk from climate change, international terrorism, natural calamities or financial crises. The analysis shows that if a risk-mitigating policy is based on the perceived riskiness of that risk, it will call for disproportionate responses (compared to what the ‘real’ risk suggests) by either under- or over-investing in risk-reducing policies, depending on the characteristics of the problem, implying significant volatility in the policy response. This type of response provides at least three challenges to society: policy cycles where implementation lags behind the actual change in risk, a lock-in to inefficient technologies and additional costs. Finally, this paper addresses the question of how the above-mentioned challenges can be managed through proper risk communication.

Are Uniform Solutions Focal? – The Case of International Environmental Agreements

The application of uniform solutions has several drawbacks, notably their lack of cost efficiency and their inability to guarantee individual rationality. A ‘proper’ specification of uniform solutions, however, reveals that uniform solutions that satisfy individual rationality always exist. When all countries hold private information about their own reduction costs, there only exists one solution that always satisfies individually rationality without use of side payments and the requirement of dominant strategy implementation: The solution that selects the smallest individually preferred uniform reduction which also give a theoretical explanation of the ‘lowest common denominator effect’.

Detecting critical choke points for achieving Good Environmental Status in European seas

Choke points are social, cultural, political, institutional, or psychological obstructions of social-ecological systems that constrain progress toward an environmental objective. Using a soft systems methodology, different types of chokes points were identified in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, the Baltic, and the North and Mediterranean seas. The choke points were of differing types: cultural and political choke points were identified in Barra and the Mediterranean, respectively, whereas the choke points in the North Sea and Baltic Sea were dependent on differing values toward the mitigation of eutrophication. We conclude with suggestions to identify and address choke points. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS A CHOKE POINT? Here, we aim to identify choke points constraining the achievement of Good Environmental Status (GEnS) under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD; Mee et al. 2008, Long 2011) in the seas of the Northeast Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. We examine the properties of choke points and indicate opportunities for decision makers to address choke points to promote the effective management of European seas. In the context of military strategy and global trade, choke points have a specific meaning: they are straits with a narrow width that constrain the number of ships passing (Smith et al. 2011, Emmerson and Stevens 2012, Roger 2012). Choke points are of strategic importance because controling them gives a state the ability to constrain the functioning of maritime transport (Noer and Gregory 1996). We apply the concept of choke points by analogy, not to narrow physical straits, but to properties of social ecological systems. We identify choke points as properties of a social-ecological system that constrain progress toward an environmental objective. Choke points are a complex mix of social, political, or psychological obstructions, congestions, or blockages that decrease the power of society to reach its objectives.