The Governance Architecture of Climate Agreements in the Light of Risky Geoengineering (Preprint)

[Geoengineering News]

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4082787

Authors 

Michael Finus, Francesco Furini

13 April 2023

Abstract

We analyse how geoengineering in the form of solar radiation management (SRM), associated with the potential of high collateral damages, affects the governance architecture of climate

agreements. We clarify under which conditions signatories to a climate agreement can avoid that non-signatories use SRM. We correct and qualify results of Millard-Ball (2012) who claims that if countries perceive the potential collateral damages of SRM to be sufficiently high (lower threshold), a climate change agreement on greenhouse gas emission reductions preventing the deployment of SRM technologies is stable. We show that an additional though a similar condition is necessary to make the avoidance of SRM rational in the first place. Moreover, we also show that such an agreement can only be stable if the threat to deploy SRM is credible which requires that collateral damages are perceived to be sufficiently low (upper threshold).

Hence, Millard-Ball is far too optimistic about the prospects of using SRM as a threat in order to stabilize a large climate agreement. We show that our results are robust in two analytical frameworks frequently used in the game-theoretic analysis of international environmental

agreements.

Keywords: mitigation-geoengineering game, coalition stability, solar radiation management, collateral damages

Source: SSRN