Conference Paper
Climate Change Negotiations Under the Shadow of History
No.
ERF_31_EN124
Publisher
ERF
Date
March, 2025
Climate change is a global problem which requires unprecedented levels of collective action to solve. We ask the following question: do historical factors and the debate over climate justice help or hurt climate change negotiation? While it is important to be cognizant of how the current situation arose, the shadow of history constitutes a form of sunk cost that has little bearing on the need for mitigation globally. Using a lab experiment with subjects assigned to rich and poor countries, we examine how subjects decide how much to contribute to a mitigation fund and who among them should bear more of the costs. A key feature of our design is that the need for mitigation is triggered based on the previous actions of our subjects, who undertook these actions without knowledge of their impact on the need for mitigation. We conduct two conditions, a baseline where the cause for mitigation (past actions) is not revealed to subjects and a treatment (the shadow of history) where this cause is revealed to the subjects. In both conditions, subjects negotiate how much to contribute to a mitigation fund. While we find evidence that total group contributions increase only slightly under the shadow of history, the distribution of those contributions changes markedly. When made aware of the historical causes of the climate problem, poor countries significantly reduce their contributions, while rich countries contribute slightly more – offsetting the reduction from the poor countries. Moreover, the slight increase in total contributions to the mitigation fund lowers the probability of disaster, raising total expected earnings. Poor countries see their welfare increase as they contribute less to the fund yet reap the benefits of higher total contributions, as they suffer more from climate disasters. Regarding policy implications, “naming and shaming” rich countries for their previous economic activities thus appears to be a successful negotiations tactic for poor countries.
Authors
Sheheryar Banuri
Dean of College, Hughes Hall, University of...
Authors
Ha Nguyen
Economist, Institute of Capacity Development (ICD), International...
Authors
Ernest John Sergenti
Senior Research Economist, Office of the Chief...