Nationally Self-Interested Climate Change Mitigation: A Unified Conceptual Framework

It has long been assumed that international cooperation on climate change has been slow because it is not in the interest of individual countries to act. This is based on the belief that climate change mitigation actions are net-costly for an individual state, despite the global, long-term benefit of avoiding dangerous climate change. Following this logic, individual countries all have the incentive to ‘free-ride’ on the efforts of others. This 'individually rational' behaviour would result in climate change mitigation that is 'collectively insufficient' to avoid dangerous climate change. However, this view is increasingly being challenged by theory and evidence. Recent research has suggested that much climate change mitigation action would actually be in states’ self-interest. This paper brings together that research into a single, coherent framework. It argues that there is a strong case that most of the emission reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change can be achieved in ways that result in national economic benefits that outweigh the costs, even before climate-related benefits are taken into account.