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Reconciling Trade and Environment in East Asia
Abstract
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In Chapter 4, Jack N. Barkenbus turns our attention to trade and economic globalization, and their relationship to international environmental cooperation in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region more broadly. As he shows, many East Asian governments and Western governmental and non-governmental actors are at loggerheads over the incorporation of environmental conditions in future trade agreements. There is considerable pressure on East Asian states to adopt environmental standards in their trade practices. However, those states reject the legitimacy of such pressures. In general, they view environmental components of trade agreements as blatant protectionism that impinges on their sovereign rights to establish their own environmental standards. Barkenbus argues, however, that increasing environmental pressures are part-and-parcel of the process of economic globalization, and that by rejecting them East Asian states jeopardize further trade liberalization, their economic growth, and stable political relationships with other states. Moreover, East Asian states will not achieve their own trade objectives without compromising on environmental and other trade-related issues.
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Given this polarization on the issue of trade and the environment, Barkenbus argues that discussions among all parties, aimed at producing common understandings, must be given much greater attention. Discussions involving all sectors of society, not just governments, are more likely to find mutually agreeable common ground that can eventually be incorporated into negotiations. Barkenbus believes that an appropriate regional venue for such discussions would be a reconstituted Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). Encompassing 21 states around the Pacific, APEC already has the right mix of members and interests to conduct productive diplomatic dialogue. However, for progress on environment and trade to be achieved, Barkenbus recommends that APEC should welcome the participation of nongovernmental organizations into its forum to fully embrace all key actors in this important debate. He thinks that international environmental nongovernmental organizations are leading the effort to find a comfortable fit between further globalization and environmental protection. Globalization, according to Barkenbus, is already creating conditions for global environmental governance that includes, among other things, increasing reliance on what he calls "civil regulation" (i.e., civil society's oversight of corporate performance) to produce beneficial environmental results. Barkenbus believes that all governments need to recognize the value that civil society brings to environmental governance and seek to both foster and channel this value in responsible ways. A reconstituted APEC, embracing the involvement of nongovernmental actors, would be an important step in that direction, and as such it would be an important forum for international environmental cooperation in the context of trade.
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