A bargaining game analysis of international climate negotiations

Abstract

Climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have so far failed to achieve a robust international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Game theory has been used to investigate possible climate negotiation solutions and strategies for accomplishing them¹. Negotiations have been primarily modelled as public goods games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma², though coordination games or games of conflict have also been used^3,4. Many of these models have solutions, in the form of equilibria, corresponding to possible positive outcomes—that is, agreements with the requisite emissions reduction commitments^5,6. Other work on large-scale social dilemmas suggests that it should be possible to resolve the climate problem^7,8,9. It therefore seems that equilibrium selection¹⁰ may be a barrier to successful negotiations. Here we use an N-player bargaining game in an agent-based model with learning dynamics to examine the past failures of and future prospects for a robust international climate agreement. The model suggests reasons why the desirable solutions identified in previous game-theoretic models have not yet been accomplished in practice and what mechanisms might be used to achieve these solutions.