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Managing the Global Commons (E564)
Course Organization
Time & Location:
Monday, 16:15-18:00, Rigot
Instructor:
Professor Urs Luterbacher
Office: Rigot 25
Office hours: Tuesday 14:00-16:00
Telephone: 022 908 59 40
Email: luterbac@hei.unige.ch
Assistant:
Assia Alexieva
Office: Rigot 26
Office hours: Tuesday 14:00-16:00 and by appointment.
Telephone: 022 908 59 41
Email: alexiev3@hei.unige.ch
Course Description
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:
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Determining the incentives of various relevant actors (states, corporations, individuals) concerned by commons under different conditions. |
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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? |
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Elaborating policies that would appear to be optimal to avoid the problems raised by commons. |
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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. |
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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? |
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To what extent are trade issues of a different nature? |
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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.
Requirements
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Take Home: Based on the literature for April 23 write a short essay (5 pages max) on what sustainability means in its relationship to commons and to international and global issues. |
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Test on the whole course. |
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Course Schedule
March 12
General Introduction to Course: Substance, Organization, Requirements
March 19
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 26
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.
- 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.
April 2
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.
April 6 - April 15
Easter vacation - No class
April 16
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.
April 23
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 30
The International Situation and International Cooperation Questions
- 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.
May 7
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 14
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 Protocol: A Guide and Assessment, London: The Royal Insitute of International Affairs, Chapters 4 and 7.
May 21
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 28
Pentecost Monday - No class
June 4
Managing the International Environment: The Future of the Major Accords
- 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 climat change problem Resource and Energy Economics, In press.
- 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.
June 11
Test
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