From collective action to collective rescue
Rethinking distribution and cooperation in climate governance under common peril
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24218872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charlotte Demonsant (0009-0007-9819-8869) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Pages | 100364 |
| Publication date | 2026-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Earth System Governance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2589-8116 • E-ISSN: 2589-8116 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.esg.2026.100364 |
| OpenAlex | W7214493813 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 65 |
Distributive conflict is central to climate governance but is often treated as an external obstacle to cooperation. This conceptual paper argues that such conflict is partly generated by the dominance of a Collective Action Problem (CAP) cooperation grammar, which frames climate mitigation as managing a shared resource and makes agreement over individual contributions a precondition for action. Once institutionalized, CAP embeds distributive questions into the authorization of action itself, contributing to delay and deadlock. The paper introduces a Common Rescue (CR) cooperation grammar, illustrated heuristically through the General Average principle in maritime law. Under common peril, CR relies on standing distributive institutions (stable rules, procedures, and practices that allocate costs, losses, benefits, or sacrifices among interdependent actors) that authorize action without prior bargaining over individual contributions, highlighting the role of such institutions in enabling collective action under common perils.
Climate change mitigation · Climate governance · collective action problems · distributive conflict · Maritime law · Climate Change Policy and Economics · International Environmental Law and Policies · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
Identifying a Safe and Just Corridor for People and the Planet
Equity, climate justice and fossil fuel extraction
Constructing a Climate Change Logic
Climate Clubs
Climate Change
Beyond Markets and States
Rationality and complexity in the work of Elinor Ostrom
Using large ensembles of climate change mitigation scenarios for robust insights
Framing Loss and Damage from climate change as the failure of Sustainable Development
Analyzing collective action
Discourses of climate delay
The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure
Equitable, effective, and feasible approaches for a prospective fossil fuel transition
Climate change litigation
Between Tribalism and Trust
Narrative plots for regulatory, distributive, and redistributive policies
Beyond the tragedy of the commons
Governing the Commons for two decades
The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas
Climate justice and the international regime
Earth system governance
Years of global climate change governance research
Climate Change Litigation
Catalytic Cooperation
Backlash to Climate Policy
Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma
Discourses of climate inaction undermine public support for 1.5 °C lifestyles
Moving climate change beyond the tragedy of the commons
Earth System governmentality
Why equity is fundamental in climate change policy research
Shared burdens
Equity in Climate Change
Collective action
The Paris Agreement and the new logic of international climate politics
Reformulating the commons
Techniques of futuring
| Highly cited | No |
|---|