Reviewing the strategies for climate change and sustainability after the US defiance of the Paris Agreement: an AHP–GMCR-based conflict resolution approach

Abstract

In the landmark Paris Agreement, the global economies agreed to put forward their best efforts in mitigation and adaptation of climate change. The member countries set their international and national targets to limit global temperature rise within 2 °C. The major and developed economics play a productive role in achieving the goals set in the Paris Agreement and failing would make it hard for the global community to limit the global temperature within the targeted range. The announcement of the USA to back out of the Paris Agreement has caused uncertainty in the global climate governance (GCG) regime. The present study overviews how the US defiance is likely to affect emission space, carbon prices, and macroeconomic conditions of the economies. It also focuses on the objective to analyze multiple strategic scenarios regarding GCG considering the role of three major contributors to GHG emissions—the USA, the EU, and China. An integrated conflict resolution strategy has been proposed by combining the analytical hierarchy process and attitude-based graph model for conflict resolution. The possible post-withdrawal scenarios based on possible alternatives for the GCG regime has been examined. This study incorporates influence power-based and attitude-based approaches to generate preference rankings of the alternative GCG strategies. The influence power-based and attitude-based preferences are used in general stability and attitude-based stability analyses to explore equilibrium GCG strategies. The analyses reveal that influence power and attitudes of the decision-makers (DMs) influence the preferences of DMs. This influence on preferences has implications on the outcomes of the GCG scenarios. The results of the influence power-based and attitude-based analyses imply that the collective GCG strategies are indispensable to protect the shared natural climate for environmental sustainability and development.