5. Conclusion & Discussion
5.3. Implications & Suggestions
One of our important findings is that the decision whether or not to ratify the Kyoto protocol constitutes a social dilemma for most countries studied. So, studying Kyoto decisions from a social dilemma perspective is legitimate and even advisable. National as well as international governments will have to pay more attention to the social dilemma character of the decision whether or not to ratify the Kyoto protocol, and the implications of this social dilemma structure. Political understanding of social dilemmas regarding the Kyoto protocol is very important, since the decisions countries make regarding climate affect the entire world. The results of our study also suggest that country characteristics can influence the decision structure a country is confronted with. In particular the ratio between a country’s vulnerability and its costs for emission abatement, and its share in global emissions can influence whether a country is confronted with a social dilemma or not. The results of former research in which it is assumed that the decision structure is identical for all countries, should therefore be reconsidered. Future research should beware of the different incentives between countries before investigating their choices and the motives underlying these choices.
Whereas our study is mainly about incentives to ratify or reject the Kyoto protocol, it is interesting to link this with the actual behaviour of countries. Since this study identified the social dilemma type for a number of countries and since the actual choice between rejection and ratification of these countries is already known, this can be combined and used to clarify why a country decided to ratify or reject the Kyoto protocol. For example: according to this study the USA is confronted with a Chicken Dilemma in which it is best to do the opposite of what all others are doing. Since the majority of other countries ratified, USA’s rejection is in line with what would be expected on the basis of the social dilemma it is confronted with.
Our model revealed that the majority of countries is confronted with a decision structure with low incentives for ratification (i.e. a Prisoner’s Dilemma or a Deadlock Game). However, in reality the majority of countries did ratify the Kyoto protocol. This implies that our model is not completely in line with the actual behaviour of countries. We think there are different explanations for this contradiction. Firstly, the difference between the expected behaviour and the actual behaviour can be caused by incompleteness of the model. Perhaps there are some important factors that influence the Kyoto decision that are not included in our model. For instance, the political relations between countries, influence of lobbyists, or the public opinion can also be important factors for determining the Kyoto decision. Secondly, the contradiction between actual and expected behaviour might be clarified by the fact that we modelled the decision without incorporating the Kyoto targets for the different countries. For instance, in the first stage of the protocol (2008-2013), developing countries do not yet have to abate their emissions. Thirdly, the vulnerability to the consequences of climate change was not related to the developmental status, as discussed in Section 5.2. Thus, our suggestion is to improve the model in such a way that we can clarify and possibly even predict a country’s decision whether or not to ratify the Kyoto protocol, based on the social dilemma it is confronted with.
Therefore, more factors (e.g. political relations between countries) that can possibly affect the Kyoto decision have to be implemented in the model. Also, the different stages of the Kyoto protocol and the interdependency between the vulnerability and developmental status of countries will have to be incorporated into the model.
It is important to realize that the Kyoto protocol is just the beginning in tackling climate change and that the protocol is in continuous progress towards sustainable climate policies.
potential to promote ratification of the Kyoto protocol. This way, our study can serve as a sketch for improvement of the second stage of the Kyoto protocol after 2012. However, the implications of our study are not limited to the Kyoto protocol. The main finding that differences between countries can be connected to the social dilemma structure might be of importance to other (prospective) treaties as well. Anyway, studying the countries’ social dilemma structures in international treaties can create better understanding of international decisions and policies. Hopefully this knowledge can be used to improve the effectiveness, i.e. the success of treaties in the future.
E PILOGUE
It was a pleasure working on this research project. However, it saddled me with some difficulties, which manifests itself in the time I needed to complete it. One of the causes for this is, particularly, that I failed to resist the temptation of digging to deep into the vast diversity of subjects that play a part in the Kyoto protocol. Although this was killing my efficiency for this project, I am sure the additional information I took up will prove beneficial in future projects. Moreover, this research project has increased my interest in the Kyoto protocol. Its diversity makes it complex but ever more interesting. The projection is that, at least for the EU, the Kyoto protocol and/or its follow ups will become more and more important and dominant. For these reasons I hope to do some additional work related to the Kyoto protocol in the future.
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A PPENDICES
Appendix 1: Annex I countries
Annex I countries (i.e. industrialised countries): Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, European Union, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America.
(Source: UNFCCC)
Appendix 2: Abatement Targets
Countries Target
• EU-15, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Monaco,
Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland - 8%
• Canada, Hungary, Japan, Poland - 6%
• Croatia - 5%
• New Zealand, Russian Federation, Ukraine = 0%
• Norway + 1%
• Australia + 8%
• Iceland + 10%
Abatement targets by Annex I countries, according to the 1990 reference levels of GHG emissions.(Source: UNFCCC)
Appendix 3: Sensitivity Analysis
VH=S/5 VH=S/10 VH=S/20
PD CD DL PD CD DL PD CD DL
VL = VH 8 2 0 8 2 0 10 0 0
VL = VH/2 9 1 0 9 1 0 10 0 0
VL = VH/4 9 1 0 9 1 0 10 0 0
VL = VH/5 9 1 0 7 1 2 5 0 5
VL = VH/8 5 1 4 5 1 4 5 0 5
VL = VH/16 4 1 5 4 1 5 5 0 5
Sensitivity Analysis of the factors VH and VL: the different values for a high vulnerability (VH) and low vulnerability (VL) and the resulting combination of decision structures. VL is demonstrated as a fraction of VH. With the assumptions as made in this study, there are 7 countries confronted with a Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), one with a Chicken Dilemma (CD) and two with a Deadlock Game (DL). These results are highlighted in dark grey. The cells in light grey indicate the combination of decision structures found when changing merely one factor, that is VH or VL.