This book develops a theory of international cooperation on environmental issues. The theory integrates a number of disciplines, including game theory, economics, international law, and international relations. It explains why treaties are used to address these challenges, and what makes treaties succeed or fail. Treaties can only change behavior by restructuring the incentives that drive behavior.

Successful treaties must therefore make it in the interests of countries to participate in and to comply with an agreement demanding substantial changes in behavior such as reductions in pollution emissions. The theory is applied to a number of environmental problems including acid rain, protection of the ozone layer, the management of international fisheries, and the regulation of oil dumping at sea. The concluding chapter, updated in the paperback edition with a new afterword, uses the theory to explain why the Kyoto Protocol will fail to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and why alternative approaches may work better.