Cooperation in global climate policy:: potentialities and limitations

Since the Kyoto conference the role of the major developing countries (DCs) has been an issue involving a number of conflicting interests. While on the one hand we understand the reasons prompting DCs to refuse obligations to reduce climate gases, their sheer size makes at least the biggest DCs (China, India) major sources of climate gas emissions. Our intention here is to analyze the potentialities for a cooperative solution to this conflict. A conflict model is used to discuss the diverging interests of major DCs and industrialized countries (IC). Concentrating on the power-generation sector, we investigate the conditions for cooperation, i.e. for the DCs' voluntary participation in climate policy in their own interests. In the case of DCs with local environmental goals and ICs interested in joint implementation, secondary benefits provide the basis for cooperation. Thus. the DC's choice of technology becomes the crucial factor in conflict resolution. This enables us to formulate the conditions of cooperation interrelating the DCs' choice of technology and the ICs' investment in joint implementation in such a way as to fulfill both global environmental goals and the DCs national goals. The example of PR of China illustrates our reasoning. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.