Environmental Policies in East Asia: Origins, Development, and Future

Abstract

Environmental policies vary, depending on how a country frames and defines environmental challenges. Underlying causes of the environmental challenges can be classified as market failure, undefined ownership, government and/or institution failure, and globalization and their combination. The government of each country has seen the underlying causes as they wanted and chose policy instruments based upon their recognition. Coupled with the differences in economic development, pressures to the environmental challenges, and their management capacity, this has brought about difference in the choice of policy instruments, enforcement, effectiveness, and distributional impacts.

For an environmental policy to be more effective, it is indispensable for the government to frame environmental challenges and to address their underlying causes properly. Then all the government ministries and the political leaders should share the proper framing and definition so that they will take the environment into account in their sectoral policies, in other words, implement preventive measures and convince people and firm to integrate the environment into their activities.