Environmental cooperation in Northeast Asia: Political economy of transboundary pollution regime (Japan, China, Korea)

This research is on environmental cooperation in Northeast Asia (NEA) in the case of transboundary air and marine pollution. I focus on China, Japan, and South Korea as the main actors in regional environmental politics. I am particularly interested in how these countries in NEA have developed a unique pattern of regional cooperation characterized by a dual track system of bilaterally formal/institutional and multilaterally informal/non-institutional and open tracks. Countries in the region have concluded bilateral environmental agreements and treaties since the 1990s despite political barriers; however, cooperation at the multilateral level still shows slow progress.; The main argument of the dissertation is that regional environmental cooperation in NEA has not been developed solely as a response to a pending ecological threat or domestic public pressure, but rather has been heavily influenced by the foreign policy and economic concerns of political actors. I further argue that the development of environmental cooperation in NEA has been conditioned by historical, political, and economic factors special to the region. This finding suggests that environmental cooperation in NEA has developed a unique set of explanatory variables to explain regional regime formation, challenging and/or expanding existing environmental regime perspectives developed from European and North American experiences.; In chapters of the dissertation, I examine the current environmental situation and patterns of cooperation to date, and analyze explanatory variables determining current environmental cooperation in NEA: ecological vulnerability of regional countries; the state-society relationship; economic incentives; and the foreign policy goals of regional countries in the geopolitical contexts.; It is too early to conclude decisively what pattern regional environmental cooperation will take. Still, as long as the current regional political situation remains unchanged, even if there are increasing political and economic exchanges, environmental cooperation in NEA is likely to follow its current dual track. That is, it will become more formal and active at the bilateral level, but will remain informal, open, and loose at the multilateral level.