An adaptation-mitigation game: does adaptation promote participation in international environmental agreements?

AbstractThis paper studies how the investment in adaptation can influence the participation in an international environmental agreement (IEA) when countries decide in adaptation before they choose emissions. Three types of agreements are studied, a mitigation agreement for which countries coordinate their decisions only on emissions; an adaptation agreement for which there is only coordination when countries decide their levels of adaptation and a complete agreement when there is coordination in both emissions and adaptation levels. In every case, we assume that the degree of effectiveness of adaptation is bounded from above, in order words, adaptation can alleviate the environmental proble…