Dynamics of the climate dilemma

• Despite a growing focus on climate change from governments around the world, carbon emissions continue to rise.
• To understand why little progress has been made, we must first conceptualise the problem and its core elements.
• For example, what dynamics of trust and cooperation shape human attempts to combat climate change? How does climate change represent a social dilemma? And how have social dilemmas been resolved in other areas?
• Dr Erling Berge, professor emeritus at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, responds to these questions using policy examples from Norway’s rich history.
• He is shedding new light on past failures and future possibilities for tackling this pivotal threat to life on this planet.

Since the 1980s, the United Nations has enacted numerous conventions to reduce and prevent the pollution of our oceans and atmosphere. Yet, despite these acts, plastics and other contaminants continue to pose a threat to sea life, while CO₂ emissions have seen a 60% increase between 2018 and 1990.

Earth’s oceans and atmosphere represent open-access resources, with no authority willing or able to effectively restrict their use and abuse. There are many reasons for the failure to tackle such threats to the climate. Within nations, businesses and sectors most responsible for climate emissions hold significant political power, which they wield to delay policy measures that would diminish current profits. Meanwhile, between nations, action is often stalled by the argument that since others do little, why should we do more? This makes the challenge of achieving collective action on controlling pollution a ‘social trap’, one similar to the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’.

In the hypothetical ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, two criminals are imprisoned and put in solitary confinement. While police lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on a higher charge, they are both confined for one year on the basis of a lesser charge and simultaneously offered a bargain. If either testifies on their partner, they may be freed while the other is imprisoned for three years on the principal charge. However, if both testify each will serve two years. This presents a dilemma in which betrayal ensures – at minimum, a less negative outcome than what would be encountered by staying silent. And yet, cooperation is the only option that can distribute a fair cost between both prisoners. The hypothetical dilemma thus represents the challenge of making enforceable promises to cooperate, when a system builds the temptation to defect into each actor’s self-interest.

More than an abstract model

Game theory is the field of study that investigates hypothetical dilemmas such as the prisoner’s to predict and transform how scenarios unfold in real-world contexts. In this case, game theory seems to predict that nations will defect on their United Nations promises to reduce and prevent pollution, destroying the open access resources (often mistakenly called the commons) – their shared environment – and bringing tragedy for all players. However, it is important to note that game theoretic models are abstractions, and in their underlying assumptions and focus on specific variables, they fail to account for nuances of the real world. For example, such models often assume actors are entirely rational and will make decisions that reflect complete knowledge of all the associated benefits and drawbacks. Yet, rationality and the availability of information vary according to the context and the individuals involved.

Empirical studies on social dilemmas reveal that people around the world have managed to organise the exploitation of their common resources while avoiding their depletion or destruction. These accounts demonstrate that factors such as interpersonal trust, group size, and communication strategies all shape behaviour in ways that simplified models fail to predict. Indeed, Dr Erling Berge, Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, reveals how such factors have determined the success or failure of previous attempts to resolve dilemmas of cooperation in the exploitation of a common resource in Norwegian history. In so doing, new insights on present struggles and future possibilities for collective action on climate change are brought to the surface.

Rules and sanctions

According to Berge, one example for the resolution of a dilemma of the commons is the pre-Viking village system. In this community, individually owned fields would be made open for feeding all livestock both in early spring before the sowing of cereals, as well as after their harvest in autumn. The private owners would benefit from this collective use of their fields since livestock would loosen their soil and leave some fertilizer. These benefits would remain so long as cattle are moved to the outfields before sowing season and no user left their cattle beyond this point to exploit the land. Moving cattle at the same time would also benefit all by requiring fewer hands to herd. The problem of collective action lies in avoiding free riders, both in being too late or too early in moving out of the fields in spring, and in being too early in herding livestock back home.

Earth’s oceans and atmosphere represent open-access resources, with no authority willing or able to effectively restrict their use and abuse.

Berge traces the solution to the cattle-herding dilemma in subsequent Norwegian legislation. For example, since the Viking era a type of community assembly called the bygdeting held the power to develop local rules and a system for judging rule breakers, including those concerning the movement of cattle. From these assemblies, a regional law known as the code of Gulating was established, dictating rules for moving cattle, including a deadline for their herding to pasture, an earliest date for taking the animals home, as well as sanctions for code violations.

Triggered by tragedy

However, another historical case study from Berge demonstrates that a system of rules and sanctions is not sufficient to resolve dilemmas of the commons. Housefires had become a problem of the settled areas by the 10th century, when neighbourhoods had become more densely populated. Since buildings were made of wood, fires could rapidly engulf entire neighbourhoods until a wide street prevented further spread. Accordingly, the earliest urban code, Bjarkøyretten, counted an individual causing a fire that burned down a neighbour’s house among the most serious crimes. Additionally, free riders who relied on others preventing their fires while not investing in their own safety would come under pressure, since their neglect threatened the public good of fire protection.

Rules such as those mandating the possession of tools for stopping fire is found in the first urban code and refined in successive iterations. Requiring that streets must be built to be broad enough to prevent a fire from spreading was a point of dispute between authorities and houseowners. In fact, it was almost impossible to prevent houseowners from rebuilding their homes as they were before a fire.

However, after the fires of 1476 and 1527 in Bergen (Norway’s largest city at the time), some building lots on the waterfront were successfully left empty for fire protection, indicating that when a tragedy is felt as close or on the top of people’s minds, collective action may be taken more readily even when personal interests collide. But note that rules related to monitoring and sanctions did not work immediately.

Reflections on the current crisis

The historical case studies offered by Berge give us insight into Norway’s historical responses to social dilemmas of the open access resource and the public good and how these reflect dynamics still present in our current crisis. Firstly, to prevent free riders and to protect public goods, a common good requires a system of rulemaking and sanctioning, built by a community assembly with the power to uphold such measures. The local commons has to be created. However, as the example of fire protection demonstrates, even if rules are necessary, they are not sufficient for ensuring the desired outcomes. Indeed, this can be seen in the limited successes of the United Nations to encourage nations to limit their pollution.

We may conclude from past legislation in Norway that if a tragedy is near enough, rules are coming forth – but not necessarily their enforcement.

We may conclude from past legislation in Norway that if a tragedy is near enough, rules are coming forth – but not necessarily their enforcement. Instead, new technologies might help us protect the commons.