Outline for a Global Environmental Strategic Planning Exercise (GESPE-project)

There are good prospects to have an operational policy exercise before summer 1994, for which there will be ample interest among policy-oriented and educationally oriented people and institutions. In Chapter 1 the history of the project is described. In Chapter 2 some insights and methods are discussed, which are valuable in designing a policy exercise, among them the notion of bounded rationality, the four political cultures as distinguished by Schwarz and Thompson, and the framework of the policy life-cycle. Briefly, some lessons to be learnt from other international environmental problems are indicated. Next, attention is paid to Mintzberg's decision theory as a way to structure the negotiation processes about greenhouse gas emissions. Some related approaches from game theory and negotiations analysis are discussed, as well as some previous projects with regard to climate change policy formulation. In Chapter 3 Mintzberg's theory is applied. A set-up along the steps of design and selection is given to frame the design of the policy exercise. Decision support tools for evaluation of strategies and negotiations, for information handling and the simulation models are discussed. The set of simulation models consists of national models of each participant nation - the 'model world', which are linked through a simple climate change model and through trade relations and resource depletion phenomena. Next, the choice of actors is dealt with: the national governments, and the interfaces between the computer and the actors/participants. Finally, the hard- and software to be used and the potential users are briefly discussed. Chapter 4 is a description of the World 4.0 model, which is an extension of the World3 model by Meadows and others. At present it is only implemented at the aggregate world level and consists of some twelve submodels. Each submodel is briefly discussed with the emphasis on the energy and minerals model and its response