Klaudijo Klaser (klaudijo.klaser@unitn.it)

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Economics and Management of the University of Trento

When addressing the climate change issue, it is important to jointly consider three relevant facts – not necessarily in the order here presented: its consequences, the causes at the root of the phenomenon, and the widespread inaction despite decades of international negotiations and dozens of climate agreements. While a considerable degree of convergence has been achieved on the first two points, the third one remains insufficiently scrutinized and tackled.

Climate change is happening and will primarily impact the opportunities of future generations

Despite a vast amount of scientific evidence on the detrimental consequences of global warming, in the last four decades the average temperatures have been constantly increasing. The so-called climate stripes (https://showyourstripes.info/l) provide an immediate visualization of this (unfortunate) route. Thus, several times across the year, we come across the following type of alarming news:  the World Meteorological Organization confirms “2024 as the warmest year on record”; the European State of Climate 2024 highlights that “Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and the impacts of climate change are clear “; the Emissions Gap Report 2025 of the UN Environmental Program highlights that in 2024 global greenhouse gas emissions reached a new record, “leaving the world heading for a serious escalation of climate risks and damages”.

The ubiquitous negative impacts of climate change on nature and humankind are now well documented: extreme meteorological phenomena are becoming increasingly frequent and severe. The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples of natural processes currently affected by global warming: mutated agricultural conditions and activities, biodiversity deterioration, spread of diseases, increasing regularity and magnitude of incidents such as floods, droughts, and wildfires, or melting glaciers. To this list we should also add several nonmaterial – and, therefore, less visible – damage related to climate change, such as loss of trust in institutions and intensification of conflicts.

In short, looking at the consequences of climate change, an increasing number of indicators is showing that, in the absence of deep and durable mitigation actions, our world might end in what the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres labeled as “climate chaos”: unless this process will not be quickly slowed down or stopped, the transformations that will follow will deeply impact the entire planet’s ecosystem and our lives – especially the opportunities of the blameless future generations.

Climate change is human-made

A contextual relevant factor linked to the climate crisis is that it has been scientifically proved that its origins are anthropogenic (see, for example, the reports of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In other words, global warming and its ensuing phenomena have been directly caused by human-related activities. More specifically, human society, during its development, has produced an excessive amount of greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) that accumulated in the global atmosphere over time. This unequivocal identification of the direct cause leaves humankind with the responsibility and task of solving the problem.

Four decades of negotiations and dozens of agreements followed by inaction

In light of this twofold evidence, policymakers and nations have taken this responsibility, trying to tackle the climate change challenge by negotiating multilateral international environmental agreements (MIEAs). These represent a coordination device to collectively commit to limit or reduce GGEs in the atmosphere.

By and large, MIEAs reflect the idea that the climate change problem cannot be approached from an atomistic point of view, tackled through the commitment of a minority of virtuous agents or communities. In other words, isolated or uncoordinated actions – either as a person or as a nation –, albeit fundamental, are very likely to be insufficient to stop the increase of temperatures. Therefore, a substantial reduction of global GGEs necessarily depends on a critical mass of agents committed in favor a consistent collective action: hence the need to negotiate MIEAs.

So far, philosophers and economists have theorized various principles on the basis of which to share the burden of reducing GGEs and nations have established numerous MIEAs to encapsulate them. Nevertheless, recent history shows us that, despite almost four decades of international negotiations to establish limits and dozens of official agreements, GGEs and temperatures continue to rise. Despite the awareness concerning the consequences and causes, so far, inaction prevailed. This outcome is mainly due to one key factor: following MIEAs prescriptions is not mandatory, that is, compliance is left to the discretion of the parties – a pure voluntary act – with no sanctions in case of fiasco.

Reassessing the MIEAs standard structure: focusing on compliance mechanisms

In synthesis, the Achille’s heel that makes MIEAs collapse, preventing these to transform principles and targets in effective climate actions, is the compliance framework: this is extremely vulnerable because exclusively based on voluntary abidance. This specific weak point has also been emphasized by Klaser et al. (2021), Guida et al. (2025), Klaser et al. (in press), and Marcon and Klaser (2022) – with the second and the third manuscript presented during the past BIENN workshops.

Given the evident collective failure (i.e., the global inaction) following several decades and countless rounds of negotiations, the urgency of the climate crisis demands a reassessment of the MIEAs standard structure, addressing the focus on compliance mechanisms. At this stage, it is necessary to rethink how the climate change problem and its solution are though and approached, so to ensure not only participation in negotiations, but also and especially high rates of compliance with MIEAs. This with the objective to produce concrete results in terms of global GGEs and temperature reduction.

Exploring new compliance mechanisms for MIEAs is the main objective of my currently ongoing research project titled Structuring Effective Climate Change Agreements through Perfect Procedures: an Experimental Approach (SECCAPEA, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101150187), funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.

References

Guida, V., Klaser, K., & Mittone, L. (2025). Building sustainable futures through soft institutional interventions in the climate change context: An intergenerational experiment. Futures, 166, 103531. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103531

Klaser, K., Marcon, L., Sanjaume-Calvet, M. (in press). Compliance in the climate change context: A Kantian support for Rawls’s intergenerational sense of justice. Daimon Revista Internacional de Filosofia.

Klaser, K., Sacconi, L., & Faillo, M. (2021). John Rawls and compliance to climate change agreements: insights from a laboratory experiment. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 21(3), 531-551. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-021-09533-8

Marcon, L., & Klaser, K. (2022). Il senso di fare la cosa giusta: Rawls e Kant sugli accordi climatici. Studi Kantiani: XXXV, 2022, 65-81.