Governing Climate Change in Southeast Asia

Critical Perspectives

Jens Marquardt, Laurence L. Delina, Mattijs Smits, Jens Marquardt, Laurence L. Delina, Mattijs Smits

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000488197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Warming & Climate Change
• Index: Biological Sciences

This volume showcases the diversity of the politics and practices of climate change governance across Southeast Asia.

Through a series of country-level case studies and regional perspectives, the authors in this volume explore the complexities and contested nature of climate governance in what can be considered as one of the most dynamic and multi-faceted regions of the world. They reflect upon the tensions between authoritarian and democratic climate change governance, the multiple roles of civil society and non-state interventions, and the conflicts between state planning and market-driven climate change governance. Shedding light on climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in Southeast Asia, this book presents the various formal and informal institutions of climate change governance, their relevant actors, procedures, and policies. Empirical findings from a diverse set of environments are merged into a cross-country comparison that allows for elaborating on similar patterns whilst at the same time highlighting the distinct features of climate change governance in Southeast Asia.

Drawing on case studies from all Southeast Asian countries, namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Viet Nam, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners dealing with climate change and environmental governance.

Part 1

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429324680-1

1 Governing climate change in Southeast Asia

An introduction

Jens Marquardt, Laurence L. Delina and Mattijs Smits

DOI: 10.4324/9780429324680-2

Southeast Asia is arguably one of the most diverse and rapidly changing regions in the world. Ranging from Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam on continental Southeast Asia (Mainland Southeast Asia) to the maritime Southeast Asian countries of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Timor-Leste, the region covers a broad range of cultures, ethnicities, and religions. From constitutional monarchies over socialist one-party systems to parliamentarian democracies, many different political systems reflect the region’s heterogeneity (Croissant & Lorenz 2018). Simultaneously, cooperation, interdependencies, and exchange have increased over the past decades, bringing the countries of Southeast Asia closer together. All Southeast Asian countries, except for Timor-Leste, are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), founded in 1967. ASEAN aims to foster a regional identity and facilitates a collective debate on regional concerns such as economic development, transboundary air pollution, and climate change.

As one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change, Southeast Asia is confronted with increasingly frequent and more devastating extreme weather events like typhoons and droughts (Ha, Fernando & Mahmood 2016; Yusuf & Francisco 2009). While it is impossible to predict the social and economic damages caused by climate change, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reckons that Southeast Asia will be among the world’s hardest-hit regions in the world (Raitzer et al. 2015). As a consequence, climate adaptation measures and efforts to increase resilience have gained widespread public attention. But with the region’s rising emissions, changing consumption patterns, and economic growth, climate change mitigation and cleaner production have also entered the forefront of debate. Heavy smoke from forest fires on islands like Borneo or water scarcity in the Mekong region create tensions and conflicts over natural resources and environmental degradation while demonstrating how the causes and effects of climate change are intertwined with social, political, and economic complexities. Over a decade ago, the ADB (2009) argued in a much-noticed report that while Southeast Asia could benefit a lot from low-carbon development, the region could experience substantial losses from the devastating effects of climate change. More than ten years after the ADB report was published, we are taking stock of the region’s response to climate change and the different modes by which climate change is governed.

According to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all nations – including countries from the Global South¹ – should join forces in the global fight against the climate crisis (UNFCCC 2015). Besides, the post-Paris climate change governance regime establishes a system of ‘hybrid multilateralism’ that rests upon strong support and commitments by non-state actors (Hale 2016; Kuyper, Linnér & Schroeder 2018). Parties to the UNFCCC must present, update, and improve their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in which they delineate their voluntary commitments to mitigate climate change, outline their adaptation measures, and project future emissions trajectories. Yet, scholars like Jen Iris Allan (2019) argue that these plans are insufficient to achieve the emissions reductions required to prevent the world from dangerous anthropogenic climate change and “limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” (UNFCCC 2015), as outlined in the Paris Agreement. Simultaneously, urging countries in regions like Southeast Asia to question their emissions-intensive growth models and request more ambitious climate change mitigation measures are not free from contestation either. Given the historical emissions of consumption-intensive, high-income countries and the conflicting priorities related to climate change measures such as economic development, poverty alleviation, or industrialization, the countries covered in this volume are also confronted with various social, political, economic, and environmental challenges in governing climate change.

The international community’s pressure on the Global South to outline their mitigation efforts provokes issues of justice, equity, and the overall effectiveness of a global regime that hinges on the commitments of all parties (Agarwal, Narain & Sharma 2017; Okereke & Coventry 2016; Puaschunder 2020). In this volume, we contribute to a more contextualized and nuanced understanding of how climate change is heterogeneously governed in Southeast Asia. We also acknowledge the region’s diversity in our analyses. While countries like Laos or Cambodia represent the region’s least developed countries with minimal per capita emissions, other states like Singapore or Brunei Darussalam have developed into emissions-intensive societies. Yet, in contexts like the UNFCCC, these countries actively represent the interests of the Global South.

The authors in this volume point at the numerous issues of contestation and conflicts arising from the manifold governance arrangements and institutional frameworks for climate action in Southeast Asia. They collectively stress the need for a more nuanced understanding of climate change governance to shed light on the world’s struggle to tackle one of the most pivotal issues of our time. Doing so, they focus on the social and political contexts in which climate change policies are formulated and implemented and where climate change measures are confronted with resistance and opposition. Climate change governance, as broadly referred to in this volume, describes all modes of governing climate change by state governments and various sub- and non-state actors in society. This concept also relates to “the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions” (Hufty 2011, p.405). A better understanding of these complex governance contexts is a prerequisite for the success of the global commitment to tackle climate change.

Climate change politics and the Global South

For decades, the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ guided international climate change negotiations. Countries that have historically contributed very little to climate change (mainly those from the Global South) were expected to have less ambitious climate change commitments due to their need for economic development (Brunnée & Streck 2013). At the same time, the climate crisis can be insufficiently tackled without urgent and almost immediate action to reduce or limit the growth of emissions in the Global South. The Paris Agreement – together with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – has blurred the divide between developed and developing nations regarding who is responsible for global environmental challenges. This has become more important since, from 2010, the annual collective emissions in Global South countries have been exceeding emissions in the OECD world (Peters et al. 2012) and because most of the additional emissions in the future are also expected to come from Global South countries (IEA 2015).

Social science studies point at the adverse social and economic impacts of climate change in the Global South, which are further aggravated by widespread poverty and lack of adequate public infrastructures in these places (Araos et al. 2017; Beer 2014; Petzold et al. 2020). With many Global South countries characterized by different development levels, highest population densities, and lowest per capita income levels and their political, social, and economic instabilities, many future climate impacts, including severe weather events (Sen Roy 2018), could be magnified. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014) reports that the Global South faces the most severe climate impacts, including a general reduction in potential crop yields in most tropical and sub-tropical regions, decreased water availability for populations in many water-scarce areas, and widespread increase in the risk of flooding in many human settlements. Overall, the relative percentage of damage from climate extremes will be substantially more significant in the Global South than in the Global North (Eckstein et al. 2020; Ravindranath & Sathaye 2002).

Global South regions are extremely vulnerable to already occurring and impending climate impacts, with some areas more vulnerable than others. Projected to most likely increase over the next decades are sea-level rise in low-lying islands in the Pacific, extended periods of droughts in Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa due to decline in precipitation, and extreme weather events like heatwaves, floods, or typhoons in Southeast Asia. Besides, most Global South countries are inadequately prepared for these impacts in the near future. High population densities in areas that are also more climate-vulnerable, limited access to adaptation resources, and poor infrastructures challenge these countries’ coping strategies. Climate impacts are also experienced indirectly in these countries in terms of the spread of infectious diseases in areas like the Ethiopian highlands, or failure in crop yields in parts of Asia due to untimely rainfall (Sen Roy 2018).

In this context, it is crucial to explore the various, implicit or explicit, attempts to govern climate change in the Global South. Climate change governance-related research, particularly in emerging economies like Brazil, China, and India, has already taken off, given their rising economic relevance and political power (Never 2012). Understanding how climate change policy is implemented in an extraordinary heterogeneous group of countries in the Global South, however, is still at an early stage. In-depth studies of how climate is governed in these countries remain exceptions. Some of these limited examples include the case of Mexico, where Jose Maria Valenzuela (2014) demonstrated how a divided authority at the vertical level and political fragmentation within the Mexican state had challenged effective climate change governance in that country. In their three-province comparative analysis in China, Daphne Ngar-yin Mah and Peter Hills (2014) critically examined how central-local government relations in that country may facilitate or impede climate change policy learning. Eduardo Viola and Matías Franchini (2013) discussed policies and programs established to evaluate Argentina’s climate change governance performance, where most of the announced ambitious climate targets failed to be implemented. The Argentine situation looks similar to South Africa, where the national government struggled to enforce its comprehensive climate change policies due to competing interests (Masters 2013). In one of the few edited volumes about climate change governance in developing countries, David Held and colleagues (2013, p.4) suggested that “the locus of climate change policymaking seems to be shifting” towards domestic climate plans, policies, and targets away from the global regime context. Their collection discussed how “underlying interests, ideas and institutions” shape climate change policymaking and identified “uneven domestic capacity and divergent interest...