Gradual International Climate Policy

This talk discusses the role of international climate policy after the Paris Agreement. In the Kyoto Protocol era, international cooperation was at the forefront of climate policy, but the results achieved were relatively disappointing. The Paris Agreement has moved the focus to national policies, but international cooperation is still needed to allow the world, and not only a handful of countries or regions, to achieve Net Zero emissions by mid-century. In the more theoretical part of the talk, we will first discuss to what extent game theoretical models of International Environmental Agreements are still relevant to discuss the post-Paris scenario. We will then analyze the role of the gradual formation of international environmental agreements, discussing the impact of policy uncertainty and the reversibility of these agreements. Results suggest that a set of bilateral or regional agreements that gradually evolve over time to increase international cooperation may be the best way forward.

Alejandro Caparrós, PhD in Economics (UCM), is Professor in Energy Economics at Durham University and co-Director of the Centre for Environmental and Energy Economics (CE3). He served previously as Director and Research Professor at the Institute for Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council. He has had several visiting positions, has participated in many research projects funded by the European Commission and national agencies, and has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations Statistics Division and local entities. He also served as Lead Author of the chapter on International Cooperation for the WGIII Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He applies microeconomic tools, particularly game theory, to analysing negotiations over climate change and other global public goods. He is also interested in dynamic pollution control and ecosystem accounting.

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