Managing the Global Use of Organochlorines: A Negotiation Simulation was originally prepared as part of the MIT Chlorine Project at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) under the direction of Prof. Lawrence Susskind. During 1995-96 Adil Najam, a doctoral candidate at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, used his Kann Rasmussen Initiative in Environmental Leadership Fellowship Award to conduct a number of test runs of the game and in their light to refine the game for better research and training applications. Detailed teaching notes have also been prepared for the simulation to facilitate ease-of-use in a variety of educational settings.
As part of his dissertation research-focusing on international environmental policy-the simulation has now been tested in various countries including full runs in the United States (at various University settings, at the Consensus Building Institute and at the 1996 MIT Chlorine Conference), the Netherlands (at the International Program on the Management of Sustainability), Pakistan (at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute) and Japan (at the Tokyo Institute of Technology). Future research runs are planned in Canada, Kenya and at the United Nations in New York. These runs have also served an important educational and training function in providing relevant audiences opportunities to systematically think about viable options for setting up an international regime for the management of organochlorines.
The simulation, played over an eight hour period, is based on a scenario of the United Nations convening an international meeting of representatives from eight countries and four nongovernmental groups to discuss the possible shape of a potential global treaty on managing the use of organochlorines. The 13 roles in this negotiation simulation-USA, Japan, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, China, India, Brazil, two environmental NGOs, one industry group, one scientific organization and a UN appointed Chairperson-are provided comprehensive role instructions based on detailed research into how these roles have tended to behave in international environmental negotiations in the past. Great effort has been invested in making these instructions comprehensive, representative and realistic.
Armed with this information, but encouraged to apply their own knowledge and expertise, the players are then given the mandate of deliberating on four key issues regarding the management of organochlorines-the scope of the problem, possible actions, financing and governance structures. The goal is not as much to come up with a formal treaty text as to begin outlining the contours of consensus and dissent on these issues and listing various options and strategies for dealing with them. Innovative approaches to the treatymaking process-e.g. the full participation of nongovernmental organizations, prenegotiation negotiations amongst key parties, exercises aimed at developing a mutual appreciation of each other's interests and concerns, etc.-are built into the design of the game as are opportunities for the players to test out various coalition strategies.
Although a full draft of a likely global treaty on the management of organochlorines is often not completed in the limited time available to the players, the outlines of a possible approaches that can be taken invariably begin to emerge. More importantly, the simulation provides an excellent opportunity for participants to think in a focused and systematic fashion about the pros and cons of various options. The game provides the players with a deeper appreciation of how the international treatymaking system operates and how various countries and actors in the global arena tend to behave. Often, the most profound learning and the biggest surprise for the players comes from being forced to think and argue in a role different to their real life and thereby gain a deeper appreciation of why these actors behave the way they do on international environmental issues.
The purpose of using this simulation as part of a doctoral dissertation is not to produce quantitative `data' but as a tool for facilitating the exploration of innovative approaches to international environmental negotiation. The special utility of using a negotiation simulation to study complex global environmental politics emerges from the paucity of actual cases or real opportunities to "test out" alternative strategies and approaches. Simulations can be used to great benefit especially in that they can provide a forum which encourages innovative thinking and new ideas that might not emerge otherwise (after all, it is just a game!). The fundamental purpose of using the simulation approach to studying the chlorine policy issue is to encourage creative, innovative thinking about problems that defy treatment by more conventional analytic approaches and methods.
Although it is yet too early to outline the concrete research
conclusions (since the research runs have not yet been completed) some
key issues have started becoming obvious. These include:
b) the criticality of setting up a process where science informs the political process instead of merely becoming a tool that those wanting to promote or desist a particular course of action abuse at will;
c) the desirability of setting up an incentive-based regime instead of adopting more regulatory approaches;
d) the criticality of involving the developing countries in global environmental issues and our generally poor understanding of why these countries behave as they do in international environmental affairs; and
e) the importance of setting up financial and governance regimes that do not repeat past mistakes and are designed to be self-sustaining and inclusive, respectively.