Thesis Abstract 

CLIMATE CHANGE has become the most relevant, complex and challenging problem of mankind in present times. It affects all countries around the planet yet in many different ways. The high level of heterogeneity of impacts complicates the evaluation of the best policies and mitigation strategies to be implemented by the different nations. Moreover, regional inequality further exacerbates the international negotiation and coordination process.

The available benefit-cost optimizing Integrated Assessment Models - among the most influential models that climate scientists and economists use to assess optimal policies and inform policymakers - are relatively limited in the representation of spatial heterogeneity. This is despite strong evidence of significant regional variation of mitigation costs and benefits, institutional capacity, environmental and economic priorities. At the same time, a more flexible framework to investigate the complex behaviors and distributed decision-making dynamics that emerge from international negotiations for climate agreements is strongly needed.

This doctoral dissertation first contributes to the advancing of regional calibration in benefit-cost Integrated Assessment Models. It adopts the most recent scientific empirical contributions as sources of heterogeneity of climate change impacts and mitigation costs. Then, it discusses new assessments on optimal mitigation-policy responses, principally focusing on the inequality implications across regions. Last, it formalizes a novel agent-based negotiation framework, as a flexible approach to account for the different perceptions and decision forces in international climate negotiations.

This contribution aims at providing new tools and useful insights to both academics and policymakers, to better understand how heterogeneity affects climate change mitigation policies. It also contributes to better modelling the decision-driving forces in a complex and distributed setting like the climate change international negotiation, eventually supporting the strenuous diplomatic action in the search for cooperation-enabling arguments.