The absence of central political authorities at the international level implies that problems of global environmental change can be resolved only if national governments and other relevant organizations find some way to cooperate with each other. Researchers on common pool resources (CPRs) and international regimes, although working separately and for the most part without awareness of each other, have identified remarkably similar design principles underlying successful self-organized cooperative solutions to problems of collective action. In this project, the investigators will examine the relevance of these same theoretical principles to global cooperation on environmental change by convening a multidisciplinary conference in which prominent researchers in the fields of common pool resources and international regimes, along with political scientists who have worked on global environmental problems, will present papers and engage in intensive discussion. The investigators are interested in environmental protection and environmental change for policy as well as scientific reasons. Their analysis may assist practitioners in designing more effective institutions to protect ecological values. Thus, this project fits well under the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Initiative.
