Renewable Resources, Environmental Pollution, and International Migration

Abstract

To realize optimal management of trans-boundary renewable resources is very hard because not only is international cooperation indispensable, but several economic aspects should also be considered. In the familiar case of Japan and China, for example, East China Sea is a hot spot between the two countries. Not only is a natural gas field, which sometimes causes territorial conflicts, located just close to the border but the area is also quite rich in marine resources. As fishes are a trans-boundary renewable resource, international cooperation is required for its management. However, this is difficult to establish, and overfishing is common. For an optimal resource management policy between Japan and China, we need to consider two important aspects that have been ignored in previous studies. The first is environmental pollution caused by the smokestack manufacturing industry, which generates negative externalities on the stock of renewable resources. We focus on environmental pollution in the East China Sea, which comes mainly from China because of relatively poor pollution abatement technologies. Environmental pollution from industrial production has become one most serious problems of the world, which is difficult to solve because underdeveloped countries, without sufficient skills and funding, usually cannot control pollution well. Moreover, their governments often give priority to economic growth over protection of the environment. The second aspect is international factor mobility. Not only international trade strategies but also FDI and migration policies should be considered important for optimal economic management. Migration from China to Japan, which is the focus of this study, is not very large now, but the potential wage gap may cause a flood of labor mobility in the near future.