ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that fairness has little influence on the substantive commitments in international environmental agreements, especially when commitments require governments to implement costly actions. It shows that fairness is but one aspect of the problem of how to differentiate commitments among the participants in international agreements. The Kyoto Protocol's commitments for industrialized countries to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases are 'differentiated' to each country's particular situation, which appears to be evidence that negotiators have taken seriously the need for fairness. Conventional wisdom holds that fair agreements are more effective. A general proposition may be that strict fairness is easy to adopt when the stakes are low, but as international commitments become more costly the contours of the agreement follow more closely a country's willingness to pay. Willingness to pay would be higher and the outcome might be more regulation and international agreements that are 'fair'.
