Structuring Effective Climate Change Agreements through Perfect Procedures: an Experimental Approach

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Structuring Effective Climate Change Agreements through Perfect Procedures: an Experimental Approach (SECCAPPEA) The solution to the climate change problem can be no longer postponed because more and more indicators are showing that we are getting closer to the tipping point of an irreversible process. At the same time, climate change is a global issue that cannot be tackled by means of the commitment of a minority of virtuous agents or communities. Instead, problems of global outreach like the global warming can be solved only through a high degree of international cooperation: this is exactly the main goal of the international agreements on climate actions. However, despite several international agreements signed during the last decades for the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, nations have generally failed to comply with the prescriptions of climate change agreements, so that greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. This lack of commitment produced no relevant changes in terms of reducing the risks related to climate change. The SECCAPPEA project, through methods and tools belonging to behavioural and experimental economics, aims to study and examine perfect procedures as a new way to structure self-enforcing international climate change agreements, so that they can produce tangible results, reducing the likelihood of the world heading into the so-labelled “climate chaos”. The project will last 24 months and will be developed between the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University (associate partner for the outgoing phase) under the supervision of Professor Scott Barrett, and the Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory (CEEL) at the University of Trento (beneficiary) under the supervision of Professor Luigi Mittone.