Adaptation Effectiveness and Free-Riding Incentives in International Environmental Agreements

Abstract

While an international agreement over the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions proves to be elusive, there is a large and growing support for investment in developing more e§ective technologies to adapt to climate change. We show that an increase in e§ectiveness of adaptation will diminish the incentive of individual countries to free-ride on a global agreement over emissions. Moreover, we show that this positive e§ect of an increase in adaptationís e§ectiveness can also be accompanied by an increase in the gains from global cooperation over GHGs emissions.