#environmental interdependencies

In order to halt the depletion of global ecological capital, a number of different kinds of meetings between Governments of countries in the world has been scheduled. The need for global coordination of environmental policies has become ever more obvious, supported by more and more evidence of the running down of eco-logical capital. But there are no formal or binding arrangements in sight, as global environmental coordination suffers from high transaction costs (qualitative voting). The CO2 equivalent emissions, resulting in global warming, are driven by the un-stoppable economic expansion in the global market economy, employing mainly fossil fuel generated energy, although at the same time lifting sharply the GDP per capita of several emerging countries. Only global environmental coordination on the successful model of the World Band and the IMF (quantitative voting) can stem the rising emissions numbers and stop further environmental degradation. However, the system of weighted voting in the WB and the IMF must be reformed by reducing the excessive voting power disparities, for instance by reducing all member country votes by the cube root expression.

Author(s) Details

Jan-Erik Lane University of Genova, Genova, Switzerland.