Let’s Clear the Air: Keys to Successful International Environmental Agreements

Abstract

Climate change poses a real threat to our future. Because climate change affects the globe regardless of borders, it requires more than the action of a single nation. Multilateral international environmental agreements thus have the greatest potential to impact climate change. Understanding elements to successful agreements should inform our future decisions. While the mainstream social sciences have been divided in their approach to the problem and solutions, the keys to successful agreements will need to be interdisciplinary. This work, through a research method of testing the current mainstream social sciences’ theories and finding their inaccuracies against the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol, seeks to find the keys to successful multilateral environmental agreements. These keys are participation, distinction of parties, funding, incentive mechanisms, specificity, transparency, reporting, and the definition of a social cost. This paper will add to and refine similar scholarship that has been done.