Table Of ContentGreening East Asia
Greening East Asia
The Rise of The
eco- developmenTal sTaTe
Edited by Ashley Esarey, Mary Alice Haddad,
Joanna I. Lewis, and Stevan Harrell
University of Washington Press
Seattle
Greening East Asia was made possible in part by a Taiwan Studies Grant
awarded by the Taiwan Ministry of Education to the University of
Alberta and by funding from the China Institute at the University of
Alberta.
Additional support was provided by the Donald R. Ellegood Interna-
tional Publications Endowment.
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Washington Press
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conTenTs
Preface vii
Part I: Overview
Introduction: The Evolution of the East Asian
Eco- developmental State
Mary Alice Haddad and Stevan Harrell 5
1 East Asian Environmental Advocacy
Mary Alice Haddad 32
Part II: Policy and Law
2 China’s Low- Carbon Energy Strategy
Joanna I. Lewis 47
3 Energy and Climate Change Policies of Japan
and South Korea
Eunjung Lim 62
4 The Politics of Pollution Emissions Trading in China
Iza Ding 76
5 Legal Experts and Environmental Rights in Japan
Simon Avenell 92
Part III: Local Action
6 Local Energy Initiatives in Japan
Noriko Sakamoto 109
7 Indigenous Conservation and Post- disaster Reconstruction
in Taiwan
Sasala Taiban, Hui- nien Lin, Kurtis Jia- chyi Pei, Dau- jye Lu,
and Hwa- sheng Gau 122
8 Nature for Nurture in Urban Chinese Childrearing
Rob Efird 137
9 Sustainability of Korea’s First “New Village”
Chung Ho Kim 150
10 Eco- developmentalism in China’s Chengdu Plain
Daniel Benjamin Abramson 164
Part IV: Environmental NGOs and Co ali tions
11 Environmental Activism in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Hua- mei Chiu 181
12 Indigenous Attitudes toward Nuclear Waste in Taiwan
Hsi- wen Chang (Lenglengman Rovaniyaw) 197
13 The B attle over GMOs in Korea and Japan
Yves Tiberghien 213
14 Grassroots NGOs and Environmental Advocacy in China
Jingyun Dai and Anthony J. Spires 225
Part V: Outcomes
15 The Eco- developmental State and the Environmental
Kuznets Curve
Stevan Harrell 241
References 267
Contributors 307
Index 311
pReface
ashley esarey
East Asia is one of the world’s most populous and densely populated
regions, one where economic output, resource extraction, and environ-
mental degradation have grown rapidly since World War II. First Japan,
then Taiwan and the Republic of K orea, and now the P eople’s Republic of
China have experienced rapid economic growth and increasing integra-
tion with the world po liti cal and economic order. This pro cess has
brought a large number of environmental challenges, from pollution of
air, water, and soil, to resource extraction and degradation, to biodiver-
sity loss, to contributions to and effects of global climate change. As the
environmental challenges have grown, however, so has awareness of
them and determination in some quarters to address these challenges
and return local, national, regional, and world environments to a sus-
tainable course. This has led to serious governmental concern with envi-
ronmental degradation in all four countries, to robust environmental
movements in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and to po liti cally inhib-
ited but determined local activism in China.
East Asian environmentalism has dual significance for the future of
the earth. First, East Asia’s environmental impact is arguably the world’s
largest. Addressing the region’s environmental prob lems is thus crucial
to building a sustainable future for the earth as a whole. Without bring-
ing East Asia’s environmental challenges under control, there is little
chance for environmental improvement at the global scale. Second, East
Asia— having increased its affluence after much of Eu rope and North
Amer i ca but before South Asia, parts of Latin Amer i ca, and most of
vii
Africa— can both learn from the countries whose development came
earlier and serve as an example for those likely to increase resource con-
sumption in the coming de cades. Just how multiple actors and stakehold-
ers in the four East Asian countries have addressed, and are addressing,
environmental prob lems is crucial to any global sustainability solution
and provides invaluable lessons for a world that is considering its eco-
logical footprint with a new sense of responsibility, trepidation, and
urgency.
At the conference “Environment and Environmentalism in East Asia”
held at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta on June 4
and 5, 2016, an international group of scholars from East Asia and North
Amer i ca presented research on multiple environmental challenges and
the responses to them in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. The
Canadian Rockies provided a superb vantage point, as it w ere, from which
to survey environmentalism in one of the world’s most populous and
dynamic regions. The Banff conference also fostered collaboration (and
one snowball fight) among this book’s editors, as well as among many of
the twenty contributors.
As is often the case, the research presented in Banff evolved a fter the
organ izing princi ples for this volume took shape. A greater understand-
ing of efforts to protect the environment and raise environmental aware-
ness at regional, national, and local levels prompted the editors to
rethink the nature of commonalities among state and societal actors that
pursue sustainable growth. The articulation of the book’s central concept
of eco- developmentalism then emerged as an effort to capture the pri-
oritization of environmental protection in such areas as law and policy,
energy production, infrastructure, architecture, community design,
school curricula, food production and consumption, and waste storage
and treatment. Efforts w ere then made to place chapters in “conversa-
tion with each other” as well as with the volume’s central theme. In this
fashion, we curated a se lection of research from the conference, while
soliciting additional contributions from experts to fill in key gaps.
Taken as a whole, this book explicates the environmental threats
facing an eco nom ically vibrant and generally resource- poor region and
highlights the ways in which governments, activists, and indigenous
communities have addressed t hese challenges. The volume’s introduc-
tory chapters by Mary Alice Haddad and Stevan Harrell w ill appeal to
viii Preface
readers seeking a historical and comparative overview of environmen-
talism in East Asia, while the case studies from Japan, Taiwan, South
Korea, and China reveal the scope and complexity of efforts to amelio-
rate environmental deterioration from the grassroots to central govern-
ment policies. Harrell’s concluding chapter hails key improvements in
the region to date, flags pos si ble future stumbling blocks, and encour-
ages us to hope that a new state- society, eco- developmentalist consensus
is h ere to stay, even in China, where per capita income lags b ehind that
of the region’s demo cratic polities. Although East Asia’s environmental
challenges are in some ways unique, scholars and policy makers of other
regions may find in these chapters inspiration for eco- developmentalist
strategies applicable to the constraints and opportunities of diverse
po liti cal contexts at diff er ent stages of economic development.
As the conference or ga nizer, albeit one who drew heavi ly on guidance
from Stevan Harrell at all stages of this proj ect, I gratefully acknowledge
support from a Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of Education Tai-
wan Studies Grant administered through the University of Alberta’s
Department of East Asian Studies, as well as from the China Institute at
the University of Alberta, which provided funding and assistance with
conference logistics. The following individuals helped to make the Banff
conference a success: Mickey Adolphson, Erin Asselin, Vivien Chiew, Mi
Kwi Cho, Elizabeth French, Joanne McKinnon, Michaela Pedersen-
Macnab, Vivian Su, Qian Tang, Tim Tang, Jia Wang, and Noureddin
Zaamout. Additionally, special thanks go to conference participants Jef-
frey Broadbent, Ya- lin Chen, Chien- san Feng, Koichi Hasegawa, Gordon
Houlden, Shih- Jung Hsu, Wei- chieh Lai, Florence Lowe- Lee, Myung- Jae
Song, Ian Urquhart, Joohoo Whang, Rupert Wingfield- Hayes, Xiao Qiang,
Emily Yeh, and Xiaobo Zhang for insights and advice.
The University of Washington Press editorial team, including execu-
tive editor Lorri Hagman, assistant editor Neecole Bostick, and produc-
tion editor Julie Van Pelt, made the publication of a book with a large
group of contributors an enjoyable pro cess.
The views expressed in this book are t hose of the editors and the con-
tributors; we bear sole responsibility for any errors.
Preface ix
