The Law, Agency and Global Climate Change

Abstract

"If the predictions of climatologists are to be believed, we face fundamental policy choices regarding the emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. These policy choices will challenge the ingenuity of a number of national governments in both the industrialized nations and in the agrarian tropics. There will be calls for international cooperation, for a new global climate regime, and for mandated changes in behaviors so as to reduce emissions of--and/or to enhance the processing capacity for--such gases. Throughout, there will doubtless arise concerns for national sovereignty in the face of demands that individual governments enforce new behavioral norms on their citizens. The literature on international resource regimes is impressive and will not be explored here. Instead, I wish here to introduce into the discussion of international resource regimes the concept of agency. The theory of agency has arisen within economics to capture the incentive problems that exist when an individual seeks to encourage some particular performance on the part of another; the classic agency problem is the employment contract between the owner of a firm and an employee. The owner--the principal--seeks certain behaviors on the part of the employee (the agent). Notice that the performance of the agent can be differentially motivated through the nature of the contract between principal and agent--hourly wages, piece rates, or an annual salary. I hope to illustrate here that new international legal regimes for mitigating serious climate change can, to good effect, be treated as international agency problems."