Managing the Global Commons

Course Organization

Professor:
Urs Luterbacher

 

Course Description

International environmental and sometimes trade and other economic problems raise particular issues for international cooperation. Usually, global environmental change problems are characterised as commons where the relevant metaphor is in terms of a resource to which everybody has free access and thus an incentive to use as much of it as possible without regard to what the other users are doing. If every user has the same attitude, the resource is rapidly depleted and the environment to which it belongs is no longer sustainable. This conclusion is also valid for global resources such as the atmosphere or the oceans which have therefore been referred to as global commons. Trade and other issues present sometimes different, sometimes similar structures.

 

Syllabus

International environmental and sometimes trade and other economic problems raise particular issues for international cooperation. Usually, global environmental change problems are characterized as commons where the relevant metaphor is in terms of a resource to which everybody has free access and thus an incentive to use as much of it as possible without regard to what the other users are doing.  If every user has the same attitude, the resource is rapidly depleted and the environment to which it belongs is no longer sustainable. This conclusion is also valid for global resources such as the atmosphere or the oceans, which have therefore been referred to as global commons. Trade and other issues present sometime different, sometimes similar structures. This will be examined along the following lines:

Determining the incentives of various relevant actors (states, corporations, individuals) concerned by commons under different conditions.

Solving conflicts generated by commons issues in which often actors see each other as preying on exhaustible or slowly renewable resources. How can such conflicts be solved?

Elaborating policies that would appear to be optimal to avoid the problems raised by commons. 

Negotiating the regulation of the international environment. In these complex negotiations among international actors, governments are often caught between international and domestic pressures on these issues.

Accommodating different requirements of parallel environmental regimes. Environmental regulations and accords can create potential conflicts with other types of international arrangements such as for instance trade and financial regimes. How can such situations be avoided?

To what extent are trade issues of a different nature?

      This seminar intends to give students a survey of concepts, ideas, and methodologies and of the ways these can be applied to the issues of coping with commons problems, environmental bargaining negotiations, and agreements at the international level.  Particular attention will be given to bargaining of agreements about resource use, ozone layer protection and climate change with some emphasis on the latest developments such as the Kyoto protocol of the Framework Convention on Climate Change and their implications for the general problems linked to international cooperation.

 

Readings:

All of the required readings are included in a packet available for purchase from L’Imprimerie Minute. (http://www.imprimerie-minute.ch)

 

Requirements:

1. Take Home: Based on the literature for April 12 write a short essay (5 pages max) on what property rights mean in its relationship to commons and to international and global issues.
2. Test on the whole course.

 

Class Schedule

 

February 22: General Introduction to Course: Substance, Organization, Requirements

 

March 1: Substantive Introduction: Collective Goods and their different characteristics

Sandler Todd and Daniel G. Arce (2002) “Pure Public Goods versus Commons” Research  Paper, USC

Taylor Michael (1987) The Possibility of Cooperation Cambridge, UK: Cambridge   University Press, Chapt. 1(Introduction)

 

March 8: The Problem of the Commons: Statics, Corrective Instruments, Property Rights

Hardin, Garret, (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, 162:1243-48.

Coase, Ronald (1960) “The Problem of Social Cost” The Journal of Law and Economics,    3:1-44.

Demsetz Harold (1967)  “Towards a Theory of Property Rights” The American Economic   Review, 57,2 : 347-359.

Ostrom, Elinor (1990) The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.     Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapts. 1 and 2.

 

March 15: The Regulation and Allocation of Collective Goods

Dasgupta, P.S. and G. M. Heal (1979) Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources.  The Cambridge economic Handbooks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   Chapters 1, 2 (11-21), and 3.

Bergstrom, Theodore (2002) Lecture 4- Lindahl Equilibrium, Ms. University of California  Santa Barbara.

 

March 22: The Problem of the Commons: Dynamics, Renewable Resources, Instruments

Dasgupta, P.S. and G. M. Heal (1979) Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources.   The Cambridge economic Handbooks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Chapter 5.

 

March 29: Exhaustible Resources, Land Use Issues

Dasgupta, P.S. and G. M. Heal (1979) Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources.   The Cambridge economic Handbooks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   Chapter 6.

Luterbacher,  Urs (2004) “Migration Patterns, Land Use and Climate Change” in   Unruh, Jon D. Maarten S. Krol and Nurit Kliot Environmental Change and its   Implications for Population Migration Dordrecht: Kluwer: 165-175.

 

(Easter vacation, from April 2 to April 11, 2010)

 

April 12:  The Conservationist Dilemma, Sustainability Issues and the Future

Y. Hossein Farzin (1984) “The Effect of the Discount Rate on Depletion of Exhaustible   Resources” The Journal of Political Economy, 92, 5: 841-851.

Stern, Nicolas (2006) The case for action to reduce the risks of climate change 

Stern Nicolas (2006) Value judgments, welfare weights and discounting: issues and   evidence

Stern Nicolas (2006) Building an effective international response to climate Change

Dasgupta, Partha (2006) Comments on the Stern Review's Economics of Climate Change

Nordhaus, William (2006) The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change 

 

April 19: The International Situation and International Cooperation Questions

Hoel, Michael (1991) “Global Environmental Problems: The Effects of Unilateral Actions   Taken by One Country.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management  20, 55–70.

Greif, Avner (1993) Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade:    The Maghribi Traders’ Coalition, The American Economic Review, 83, 3, 525-548.

Barrett, Scott (1998) A Theory of International Co-operation, Working Paper, Johns Hopkins  University School of Avanced International Studies.

Luterbacher, Urs(1994) International Cooperation: The Problem of the Commons and the  Special Case of the Antarctic Region, Synthese 100: 413-440.

Luterbacher, Urs and Peter Davis (2010) “Explaining Unilateral Cooperative Actions: The  Case of Greenhouse Gas Regulations” The Monash Law Review, forthcoming.

 

April 26: Regional Cooperation Problems and Solutions

Luterbacher, Urs,  Valerii Kuzmichenok, Gulnara Shalpykova and Ellen Wiegandt “Glaciers  and Efficient Water Use in Central Asia” in Orlove Benjamin, Ellen Wiegandt and  Brian Luckman, Darkening Peaks, Berkeley, Universitiy of California Press,   forthcoming.

Luterbacher, Urs and Dushan Mamatkhanov “Water and Mountains, Upstream and   Downstream Relationships: Analyzing Unequal Relations” in Ellen Wiegandt edit.  Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge Amsterdam Springer-Kluwer,  forthcoming.

 

May 3: The Montreal and the Kyoto Protocol

Benedick Richard The Improbable Montreal Protocol: Science, Diplomacy and Defending  the Ozone Layer

Bodansky, Daniel (2001)l “The History of the Global Climate Change Regime” in Luterbacher  Urs and Detlef Sprinz International Relations and Global Climate Change,   Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 23-40

 Bodansky, Daniel (2001)l “International Law and the Design of Climate Change” in   Luterbacher Urs and Detlef Sprinz International Relations and Global Climate   Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 201-220.

Grubb, Michael (with Christian Vrolijk and Duncan Brack) (1999)  The Kyoto Protoco:   A Guide and Assessment, London: The Royal Insitute of International Affairs,   Chapters 4 and 7.

 

May 10: The Instrument Debate

Chichilnisky, Graciela (1997)  "North-South Trade and the Global Environment",   American Economic Review 84: 851-74.

Chichilnisky, Graciela (1997)  Development and Global Finance: The Case for an    International Bank of Environmental Settlements, UNDP Discussion Paper Series.

Nordhaus William D. (2005) Life After Kyoto: Alternative Approaches to Global   Warming Policies

 

May 17: Managing the International Environment: The Economic Impact Analysis

Nordhaus William and Zilli Yang (1996) “A Regional Dynamic General-Equilibrium Model  of Alternative Climate-Change Strategies”, American Economic Review 86, 741–765.

 Eyckmans Jon and Henry Tulkens (2003) Simulating coalitionally stable burden sharing   agreements for the climate change problem Resource and Energy Economics

 

May 24: The Future of the Major Accords

Luterbacher Urs and Carla Norrlöf (2001)“The Organization of World Trade and the Climate  Regime” in Luterbacher Urs and Detlef Sprinz International Relations and Global  Climate Change Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 279-295.

Dai Xinyuan (2007) International Institutions and National Policies. Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press: 1-32, 140-151.

 

May 31: Test