CIAO DATE: 02/2013
January 2013
Centre for International Governance Innovation
To promote investments in environmental global public goods, major countries must be “bribed,” so to speak, with an appeal to selfish interests. This paper, by CIGI Senior Fellow Barry Carin, outlines the various political obstacles that have stalled the global climate change debate, noting that “proposed conventional ‘inside-the-box’ solutions cannot deal with the difficulties of long-time horizons, uneven intergenerational benefit streams, uncertainty and lack of shadow prices.” The paper offers a blunt assessment of what is needed in response, and presents a global package of “expenditure” ideas, which Carin believes “will win widespread support from all major countries.” He then maps out a positive-sum initiative — or “Green Super Fund” (GSF) — for financing this package, including “a variety of funds and programs with potentially significant leverage to mobilize powerful constituencies who will lobby for the package.” In acknowledging that radical economic and political changes are required to make the GSF a reality, Carin points to the euro currency and the evolving policy on sovereign debt relief as international examples of a fundamental shift occurring in the global interest. “If the rules do not allow for a solution to an existential problem,” he concludes, “we have to change the rules.”
Resource link: Sustainable Development and Financing Critical Global Public Goods [PDF]