East Asian Environmental Co-operation: Central Pessimism, Local Optimism

Abstract

Introduction Much of the literature on environmental politics has discussed the the possibilities for and limitations of regional environmental cooperation in East Asia. States in this region have increasingly recognized the need for regional as well as international co-operation on environmental matters and have set out to create a variety of organizations, action plans, agreements, talks, and networks for co-operation.1 The efforts made by different actors at different levels in the region are many. They include the regional environmental co-operation subgroup of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum, bilateral or multilateral talks, such as the Tripartite Environmental Ministers Meeting made up of China, Japan, and South Korea (TEMM) , intergovernmental mechanisms like Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil networks such as the North Asia-Pacific Environmental Partnership (NAPEP) . In spite of these efforts, however, there is a consensus among scholars that, overall, regional environmental cooperation in East Asia has been more discussed than acted on, and less institutionalized and less productive than was originally hoped. Although there are serious environmental problems that require a certain level of regional co-operation, such as acid rain, marine resource protection and yellow dust, states in general have to this point failed to deploy and implement concrete action plans to tackle these problems. While literature on East Asian regional environmental co-operation has proposed various possible reasons for this weak co-operation, such as heterogeneity of the key actors, historical legacies, insufficient scientific evidence and even culture, they have mostly