Environmental Regionalism in East Asia

Abstract

The chapter on environmental regionalism in East Asia focuses on the changing concepts and trajectories of regions, subregions, regionalisation and in the end regionalism experiences in East Asia. It also underlines the potential of environmental regionalism to transform these trajectories in East Asia. The first part looks at the conceptual development of East Asian regionalism with a focus on new regionalism discussions that take into account the growing impact of Globalization and the importance of regional variations, forms, agencies, and social constructs. The second part introduces the particular features of East Asian regionalism with its historically and geopolitically driven and state-led initiatives during regionalisation processes and its subregional peculiarities through different paths of Southeast (multi-layered, weakly but still institutionalized and functional arrangements) and Northeast Asia (multi-actor policy forums with intergovernmental, nongovernmental and expert-led platforms). This also shows that even subregional levels with their particular characteristics can contribute to improvement of regionalisation processes in one region and link the regional to the global. The last part focuses on the two-track nature of East Asian environmental regionalism. Then the chapter concludes that environmental issues, with their dynamic character, would be one of the channels to connect regional worlds and regionalism with Globalizm.