Environmental cooperation of Northeast Asia: transboundary air pollution

The puzzle of why Northeast Asian countries do not have anyenvironmental cooperation comparable to Europe's successfulregulatory regime even though both regions have borne similarconditions of the atmospheric problem has been explored. Inorder to answer this question, the author shed light on someof the conditions in Northeast Asia that would be necessaryfor regional cooperation to take place, by examining the factorsthat shape the environmental foreign policy of sovereign states.The success of Europe's regional cooperation in dealing withacid rain has been investigated, through the lens of interest-basedand epistemic community approaches. The interest-based approachprovides two factors – ecological vulnerability and economiccost – to show why some countries have taken more activepositions than others. In addition, the author argues that onemore factor is necessary, the existence of an epistemic community,out of the knowledge-based community perspective, because evenself-interested states have difficulties in defining their interestsdue to high uncertainty and complexity about developing goalsand preferences. After applying the two perspectives to thecooperation of Northeast Asian countries, it is found that lackof domestic and regional consensus on ecological vulnerabilityto transboundary acid deposition and the high economic costsof reducing emission have contributed to slow development ofthe cooperation of Northeast Asia. In addition, the lack ofsolid expert communities in Japan, as a leading country, couldhinder Northeast Asian countries from speeding up the transitiontoward regulatory regime formation from the current informationsharing cooperation. Received for publication August 12, 2005. Accepted for publication December 22, 2006.