Abstract
The need for stronger global coordination of environmental policies has become ever more obvious, but there are no formal arrangements in sight. The UN framework of UNEP is not delivering effective policies. Only global environmental coordination on the successful model of the World Band and the IMF can stem the rising emissions numbers and projections—quantitative voting reflecting the differences in size between the states of the world. However, the system of weighted voting typical of the WB and the IMF must be reformed in an egalitarian manner, when a global ecology organisation is set up, reducing their excessive voting power disparities. This paper suggests a simple but effective mechanism for reducing these voting power disparities, decreasing all member country votes by either the square root or the cube root expression.
Highlights
Planet Earth is running down its ecological capital
Coleman and his two ideas, developed from game theory (Coleman, 1986, 1998): 1) Non-economical capital: Coleman concentrated upon social capital, or trust, but I would argue that ecological capital is even more important for the future of mankind; there is an urgent need for collective action in order to protect global environmental assets from rapid depletion
Whereas the World Bank and the IMF should consider reducing the inequalities in vote allocation while giving more votes to the emerging economies, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) should reflect on the possibility of introducing some form of quantitative voting
Summary
Planet Earth is running down its ecological capital. Whereas its economical capital—real or financial–tends to augment every year, resulting in sustained economic growth, the environmental assets of the world are shrinking, day by day and year in year out. To account for the dismal failure to protect the environmental assets of the world—the great animals, clean air, fresh water, tropical forests, graze lands, etc., I will turn to late sociologist James S. Coleman and his two ideas, developed from game theory (Coleman, 1986, 1998): 1) Non-economical capital: Coleman concentrated upon social capital, or trust, but I would argue that ecological capital is even more important for the future of mankind; there is an urgent need for collective action in order to protect global environmental assets from rapid depletion. At the core of the problematic of protecting ecological capital is two classical collective action problems: first free riding upon open access resources, reducing ecological capital day by day, and second the failure of the governments of the states of the world to decide upon global environmental coordination and set up an agency to enforce a global policy
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