Effective Advocacy: Lessons from East Asia’s Environmentalists by Mary Alice Haddad

Modern environmentalism originated in the West, beginning when European and North American countries first began to experience the great transformation of industrialization and urbanization. East Asia is an eager learner of the Western modernity; in the last century, the region has mastered the art of manufacturing and emerged as the global export powerhouse. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are vibrant and stable democracies, whereas China engineered a sort of “political miracle” as its Leninist control drew strength from, rather than being subverted by, capitalist development. Following these economic and political achievements, the four above-mentioned countries are making huge strides toward better environmental governance. Even climate denialism, which is prevalent among some of the United States top politicians, only found a weak rejoinder in East Asia. Effective Advocacy offers a long-awaited environmental assessment of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, with additional glances at Hong Kong and Indonesia. This ground-breaking book is built upon a decade of research across this region, generating valuable data on the activities of environmental NGOs (ENGOs) and making use of interviews with key participants. Given the vast scope of the research topic and its internal heterogeneity, this book is a landmark achievement simply because nothing like it has been published previously. While Effective Advocacy appears to have been written primarily for Western readers, it also contributes to mutual dialogue among East Asian policymakers and activists, whose exchanges are at best intermittent and episodic despite their geographical proximity and cultural affinity. There has been a widespread understanding that a shared Confucian heritage in East Asia bestowed deference toward authorities, thus frustrating the efforts of promoting changes from below. Mary Alice Haddad bursts this myth by demonstrating that advocacy efforts in this region are likely to be successful, even in authoritarian China. At the same time, she finds more environmental actions directed toward pollution, and less toward climate change, compared to other regions. With in-depth case studies, Haddad seeks to discover the success formula of East Asian environmentalists. Effective Advocacy unravels a pragmatic, cooperative, gradualist logic behind these successful actions. Positive results are more likely to come when environmentalists have friends inside the government, build trusting relationships with corporations, and target less ambitious goals,