Greening East Asia: The Rise of the Eco-developmental State

by Ashley Esarey (editor), Mary Alice Haddad (Editor), Joanna I. Lewis (Editor)

East Asia hosts a fifth of the world's population and consumes over half the world's coal, a quarter of its petroleum products, and a tenth of its natural gas. It also produces a third of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. The region--whose countries share ecological, sociocultural, and political characteristics while varying in size, resource wealth, history, and political systems--offers excellent insights into the complex dynamics influencing environmental politics, advocacy, and policy. With essays addressing Japan after Fukushima, coal plants and wind turbines in China, environmental activism in Taiwan, and sustainable rural development in South Korea, Greening East Asia explores a region's shift from development to "eco-development" in acknowledgment that environmental sustainability is a critical component of economic growth.

327 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2020

Reviews

[Dylan]

Was quite excited for this book, but unfortunately didn't find enough here to make use of. I would have liked more about the ways (a) environmentalism may be a force for democratization, (b) environmental policies can simply be a continuation of authoritarian politics, (c) implications of decentralizing energy production as part of more democratic economies. I think a monograph by Harrell might have worked better than the mish-mash of contributions from different authors.