International Environmental Agreements for biodiversity conservation: a game-theoretic analysis

Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on International Environmental Agreements with an analysis of key characteristics for biodiversity conservation. We study three features that are specific to an international conservation agreement: the existence of a natural upper bound of conservation in each country, the importance of local benefits, and the subadditivity of the global conservation function. We consider asymmetries in benefits and costs of conservation and, separately, in the upper bound of conservation in each country, and we examine the impacts of these features on coalition stability and on the effectiveness of biodiversity agreements. Results show that subadditivity of the global conservation function can lead to larger stable coalitions. The inclusion of a transfer scheme that might be implemented through, e.g., international trade of biodiversity credits, can have an impact on coalition composition and can improve conservation outcomes and the size of stable coalitions in certain ranges of the parameter space.