A well-timed shift from local to global agreements accelerates climate change mitigation

Vadim A. Karatayev (), Vítor V. Vasconcelos, Anne-Sophie Lafuite, Simon A. Levin, Chris T. Bauch and Madhur Anand
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Vadim A. Karatayev: School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph
Vítor V. Vasconcelos: Informatics Institute and Institute for Advanced Study, University of Amsterdam
Anne-Sophie Lafuite: School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph
Simon A. Levin: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University
Chris T. Bauch: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo
Madhur Anand: School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Recent attempts at cooperating on climate change mitigation highlight the limited efficacy of large-scale negotiations, when commitment to mitigation is costly and initially rare. Deepening existing voluntary mitigation pledges could require more stringent, legally-binding agreements that currently remain untenable at the global scale. Building-blocks approaches promise greater success by localizing agreements to regions or few-nation summits, but risk slowing mitigation adoption globally. Here, we show that a well-timed policy shift from local to global legally-binding agreements can dramatically accelerate mitigation compared to using only local, only global, or both agreement types simultaneously. This highlights the scale-specific roles of mitigation incentives: local agreements promote and sustain mitigation commitments in early-adopting groups, after which global agreements rapidly draw in late-adopting groups. We conclude that focusing negotiations on local legally-binding agreements and, as these become common, a renewed pursuit of stringent, legally-binding world-wide agreements could best overcome many current challenges facing climate mitigation.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23056-5

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