Resource heterogeneity leads to unjust effort distribution in climate change mitigation.

Julian Vicens,Carlos Gracia-Lázaro,Mario Gutiérrez-Roig,Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes,Nereida Bueno-Guerra,Angel Sánchez,Josep Perelló,Yamir Moreno,Jordi Duch

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0204369

Abstract

Climate change mitigation is a shared global challenge that involves collective action of a set of individuals with different tendencies to cooperation. However, we lack an understanding of the effect of resource inequality when diverse actors interact together towards a common goal. Here, we report the results of a collective-risk dilemma experiment in which groups of individuals were initially given either equal or unequal endowments. We found that the effort distribution was highly inequitable, with participants with fewer resources contributing significantly more to the public goods than the richer −sometimes twice as much. An unsupervised learning algorithm classified the subjects according to their individual behavior, finding the poorest participants within two “generous clusters” and the richest into a “greedy cluster”. Our results suggest that policies would benefit from educating about fairness and reinforcing climate justice actions addressed to vulnerable people instead of focusing on understanding generic or global climate consequences.

Highlights

Mitigating anthropogenic climate change is a complex problem involving many heterogeneous actors with different agendas and socioeconomic conditions [1,2,3,4,5]
While climate change mitigation requires a collective action, it is not clear what are the effects of the inherent diversity of the agents involved in it [6]
The participants only keep the remaining money with a probability which in [14] was 90%, 50%, or 10%. In this case no money goes to climate change mitigation

Summary

Introduction

Mitigating anthropogenic climate change is a complex problem involving many heterogeneous actors with different agendas and socioeconomic conditions [1,2,3,4,5]. While climate change mitigation requires a collective action, it is not clear what are the effects of the inherent diversity of the agents involved in it [6]. There is the risk that the poor exploits the rich, i.e., that the largest beneficiaries of a common goods bear a disproportionately large burden in its production [7]. Inequality and fairness in climate change actions. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

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Results

Conclusion