Greening East Asia Greening East Asia The Rise of The eco- developmenTal sTaTe Edited by Ashley Esarey, Mary Alice Haddad, Joanna I. Lewis, and Stevan Harrell University of Washington Press Seattle Greening East Asia was made possible in part by a Taiwan Studies Grant awarded by the Taiwan Ministry of Education to the University of Alberta and by funding from the China Institute at the University of Alberta. Additional support was provided by the Donald R. Ellegood Interna- tional Publications Endowment. Copyright © 2020 by the University of Washington Press Composed in Chaparral Pro, typeface designed by Carol Twombly 24 23 22 21 20 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of Amer i ca All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. university of washington press uwapress . uw . edu library of congress cataloging- in- publication data lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020013197 lc ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020013198 isbn 978-0-295-74790-3 (hardcover), isbn 978-0-295-74791-0 (paperback), isbn 978-0-295-74792-7 (ebook) cover photograph: Hong Kong at sunrise, ca. 2017 (iStock/MediaProduction) The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum require- ments of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.∞ conTenTs Preface vii Part I: Overview Introduction: The Evolution of the East Asian Eco- developmental State Mary Alice Haddad and Stevan Harrell 5 1 East Asian Environmental Advocacy Mary Alice Haddad 32 Part II: Policy and Law 2 China’s Low- Carbon Energy Strategy Joanna I. Lewis 47 3 Energy and Climate Change Policies of Japan and South Korea Eunjung Lim 62 4 The Politics of Pollution Emissions Trading in China Iza Ding 76 5 Legal Experts and Environmental Rights in Japan Simon Avenell 92 Part III: Local Action 6 Local Energy Initiatives in Japan Noriko Sakamoto 109 7 Indigenous Conservation and Post- disaster Reconstruction in Taiwan Sasala Taiban, Hui- nien Lin, Kurtis Jia- chyi Pei, Dau- jye Lu, and Hwa- sheng Gau 122 8 Nature for Nurture in Urban Chinese Childrearing Rob Efird 137 9 Sustainability of Korea’s First “New Village” Chung Ho Kim 150 10 Eco- developmentalism in China’s Chengdu Plain Daniel Benjamin Abramson 164 Part IV: Environmental NGOs and Co ali tions 11 Environmental Activism in Kaohsiung, Taiwan Hua- mei Chiu 181 12 Indigenous Attitudes toward Nuclear Waste in Taiwan Hsi- wen Chang (Lenglengman Rovaniyaw) 197 13 The B attle over GMOs in Korea and Japan Yves Tiberghien 213 14 Grassroots NGOs and Environmental Advocacy in China Jingyun Dai and Anthony J. Spires 225 Part V: Outcomes 15 The Eco- developmental State and the Environmental Kuznets Curve Stevan Harrell 241 References 267 Contributors 307 Index 311 pReface ashley esarey East Asia is one of the world’s most populous and densely populated regions, one where economic output, resource extraction, and environ- mental degradation have grown rapidly since World War II. First Japan, then Taiwan and the Republic of K orea, and now the P eople’s Republic of China have experienced rapid economic growth and increasing integra- tion with the world po liti cal and economic order. This pro cess has brought a large number of environmental challenges, from pollution of air, water, and soil, to resource extraction and degradation, to biodiver- sity loss, to contributions to and effects of global climate change. As the environmental challenges have grown, however, so has awareness of them and determination in some quarters to address these challenges and return local, national, regional, and world environments to a sus- tainable course. This has led to serious governmental concern with envi- ronmental degradation in all four countries, to robust environmental movements in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and to po liti cally inhib- ited but determined local activism in China. East Asian environmentalism has dual significance for the future of the earth. First, East Asia’s environmental impact is arguably the world’s largest. Addressing the region’s environmental prob lems is thus crucial to building a sustainable future for the earth as a whole. Without bring- ing East Asia’s environmental challenges under control, there is little chance for environmental improvement at the global scale. Second, East Asia— having increased its affluence after much of Eu rope and North Amer i ca but before South Asia, parts of Latin Amer i ca, and most of vii Africa— can both learn from the countries whose development came earlier and serve as an example for those likely to increase resource con- sumption in the coming de cades. Just how multiple actors and stakehold- ers in the four East Asian countries have addressed, and are addressing, environmental prob lems is crucial to any global sustainability solution and provides invaluable lessons for a world that is considering its eco- logical footprint with a new sense of responsibility, trepidation, and urgency. At the conference “Environment and Environmentalism in East Asia” held at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta on June 4 and 5, 2016, an international group of scholars from East Asia and North Amer i ca presented research on multiple environmental challenges and the responses to them in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. The Canadian Rockies provided a superb vantage point, as it w ere, from which to survey environmentalism in one of the world’s most populous and dynamic regions. The Banff conference also fostered collaboration (and one snowball fight) among this book’s editors, as well as among many of the twenty contributors. As is often the case, the research presented in Banff evolved a fter the organ izing princi ples for this volume took shape. A greater understand- ing of efforts to protect the environment and raise environmental aware- ness at regional, national, and local levels prompted the editors to rethink the nature of commonalities among state and societal actors that pursue sustainable growth. The articulation of the book’s central concept of eco- developmentalism then emerged as an effort to capture the pri- oritization of environmental protection in such areas as law and policy, energy production, infrastructure, architecture, community design, school curricula, food production and consumption, and waste storage and treatment. Efforts w ere then made to place chapters in “conversa- tion with each other” as well as with the volume’s central theme. In this fashion, we curated a se lection of research from the conference, while soliciting additional contributions from experts to fill in key gaps. Taken as a whole, this book explicates the environmental threats facing an eco nom ically vibrant and generally resource- poor region and highlights the ways in which governments, activists, and indigenous communities have addressed t hese challenges. The volume’s introduc- tory chapters by Mary Alice Haddad and Stevan Harrell w ill appeal to viii Preface readers seeking a historical and comparative overview of environmen- talism in East Asia, while the case studies from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China reveal the scope and complexity of efforts to amelio- rate environmental deterioration from the grassroots to central govern- ment policies. Harrell’s concluding chapter hails key improvements in the region to date, flags pos si ble future stumbling blocks, and encour- ages us to hope that a new state- society, eco- developmentalist consensus is h ere to stay, even in China, where per capita income lags b ehind that of the region’s demo cratic polities. Although East Asia’s environmental challenges are in some ways unique, scholars and policy makers of other regions may find in these chapters inspiration for eco- developmentalist strategies applicable to the constraints and opportunities of diverse po liti cal contexts at diff er ent stages of economic development. As the conference or ga nizer, albeit one who drew heavi ly on guidance from Stevan Harrell at all stages of this proj ect, I gratefully acknowledge support from a Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of Education Tai- wan Studies Grant administered through the University of Alberta’s Department of East Asian Studies, as well as from the China Institute at the University of Alberta, which provided funding and assistance with conference logistics. The following individuals helped to make the Banff conference a success: Mickey Adolphson, Erin Asselin, Vivien Chiew, Mi Kwi Cho, Elizabeth French, Joanne McKinnon, Michaela Pedersen- Macnab, Vivian Su, Qian Tang, Tim Tang, Jia Wang, and Noureddin Zaamout. Additionally, special thanks go to conference participants Jef- frey Broadbent, Ya- lin Chen, Chien- san Feng, Koichi Hasegawa, Gordon Houlden, Shih- Jung Hsu, Wei- chieh Lai, Florence Lowe- Lee, Myung- Jae Song, Ian Urquhart, Joohoo Whang, Rupert Wingfield- Hayes, Xiao Qiang, Emily Yeh, and Xiaobo Zhang for insights and advice. The University of Washington Press editorial team, including execu- tive editor Lorri Hagman, assistant editor Neecole Bostick, and produc- tion editor Julie Van Pelt, made the publication of a book with a large group of contributors an enjoyable pro cess. The views expressed in this book are t hose of the editors and the con- tributors; we bear sole responsibility for any errors. Preface ix