The absence of a comprehensive legally binding global deal has sometimes been used as an excuse for lack of policy action. Australia’s conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott claimed that the outcome at Copenhagen “vindicated his party’s decision not to support the Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme legislation”; the absence of an international deal was also an excuse when Australia’s former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abandoned a proposed emissions trading scheme. But how much does slow international progress really matter?

In a report for the World Bank and a journal article, political scientist and Nobel Economics Prize winner Elinor Ostrom has argued that we should not wait for a ‘global solution’ to emerge from international negotiations before acting on climate change. Instead, action on climate change should occur at all scales. These include individual, community, municipal, regional, and national scales as well as the international scale.

Ostrom argues for a polycentric approach for several reasons:

  1. There is evidence that people are more likely to be cooperative than predicted by conventional game theory. People are in particular more likely to be cooperative when they trust each other to be reciprocators. For this reason, it is possible to have cooperative action without negotiating a ‘global solution’.
  2. Action on climate change can also lead to positive externalities such as clean air. Clean air is particularly relevant to China, where air pollution is a major problem.
  3. At any scale, policies may encounter errors, but without trial and error, learning cannot occur. A polycentric approach facilitates learning at multiple scales.

What implications does this have for critical areas of climate policy, such as technology and carbon pricing? Policies such as research and development, as well as investment in renewable energy, all help to drive down mitigation costs. Like clean air, this is a positive externality that we need more of.

Two major issues when trying to negotiate an international climate agreement are participation and compliance. This is one reason why legally binding agreements are desirable, but designing a treaty to maximize participation and compliance is difficult. When a country makes a commitment to reduce its emissions, how do we know it will meet this commitment? Action at multiple scales means that meeting such a commitment is much more likely. If a country introduces an emissions trading scheme, it will then be highly likely that it meets the target specified by the scheme. But in the United States, the national government did not successfully pass legislation. Fortunately there are regional measures in the United States that are reducing emissions: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is an emissions trading scheme that operates in ten states; eleven states and provinces in the US and Canada are developing the Western Climate Initiative; and seven states and provinces in the US and Canada are developing the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord. These approaches make it easier for the United States to argue that it will reduce emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

Because domestic policies and measures add credibility to countries’ targets, a climate agreement with a mechanism for countries to list their policies and measures as well as targets is more likely to be successful. The Copenhagen Accord had annexes for developed countries to specify their targets and developing countries to specify policies and measures. It would make sense for climate agreements to have developed countries specify policies and measures as well.

The good news is that action on climate change is occurring at multiple scales. If Ostrom is right, there are reasons to be optimistic about the prospects for long-term cooperation. But there still are advantages to more agreement at an international level, including less excuses for inaction from politicians.