Abstract:
Although alarming news are accumulating by the day on the impact of human activities on biodiversity, ecosystems and climate change, the response by the international community has not yet been up to the faced challenges. The pursuit of self-interest has often been pointed out as a major obstacle to reach the much-needed global and/or regional agreements to tackle these problems. In this non-technical presentation, I first show how the design of an international environmental agreement can be modeled as a game involving different sovereign juridictions pursuing their own objectives and agendas. Next, I give a short account of the literature in this area and point out the remaining challenges.