Power and Responsibility in Environmental Policy Making

Abstract

With the challenges the world faces in the field of environmental policy, the research on complex interdependencies in world politics and transnational policy-making has been intensified. Several institutions came into existence in response to the increasing concerns about global climate change. This paper analyzes the structure of the parties involved in regulating climate conventions and treaties, and design instruments for allocating responsibility to them. In order to point out possibilities of allocating responsibility, the relationship between power and responsibility is examined. By applying power measures, we estimate the impact of the various agents in these contractual or instrumental arrangements taking a priori unions into consideration. We examine the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Depending on the decision topics the developing countries hold more power and responsibility than the developed countries. Both conventions refer to responsibilities of the parties as common but differentiated responsibilities. The primary responsibilities and thus power should fall to the industrial countries which is not reflected in our calculations.