International decision making and global climate change: Lessons of prior resource management efforts for consensus building.

摘要

International cooperation aimed at furthering awareness of anthropogenic climate change has been relatively rapid, but developing strategies for prevention or mitigation has taken more time. This is because anthropogenic climate change poses several particularly difficult obstacles to an integrated global strategy. These include conceiving of the atmosphere as a shared, sustainable resource, agreeing upon the causes, rates, and responsibilities of induced change among national actors, minimizing collateral effects of economic development while optimizing growth, particularly in LDCs, and encompassing the complexity of the problem's various ramifications in a multilateral policy. This paper addresses the availability of an incremental and iterative learning process for enhancing international cooperation in the management of global climate change. Through an examination of three case studies: regional seas, ozone, and nuclear materials regulation, models for global cooperation are identified which effectively encompass concerns over the size and distribution of correction costs among countries, the uncertainties involved in identifying cause-effect relationships, the vulnerability of shared resources, and the divergent needs of developed and developing countries. 132 refs., 3 tabs.