green dragons: the politics of climate change in asia change of climate politics the dragons: green Green Dragons The Politics of Climate Change in Asia CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & A Report of the CSIS Asian Regionalism Initiative CSIS INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 1800 K Street, NW | Washington, DC 20006 editors Tel: (202) 887-0200 | Fax: (202) 775-3199 Michael J. Green E-mail: [email protected] | Web: www.csis.org Charles W. Freeman III Amy E. Searight authors Kiyoaki Aburaki Malcolm Cook green Zhu Feng Charles W. Freeman III /freeman 111 /freeman Michael J. Green Prem Shankar Jha Sarah O. Ladislaw Wonhyuk Lim /searight Agus P. Sari Amy E. Searight November 2010 ISBN 978-0-89206-605-6 CSIS CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & Ë|xHSKITCy066056zv*:+:!:+:! CSIS INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Green Dragons The Politics of Climate Change in Asia A Report of the CSIS Asian Regionalism Initiative editors Michael J. Green Charles W. Freeman III Amy E. Searight authors Kiyoaki Aburaki Malcolm Cook Zhu Feng Charles W. Freeman III Michael J. Green Prem Shankar Jha Sarah O. Ladislaw Wonhyuk Lim Agus P. Sari Amy E. Searight November 2010 About CSIS In an era of ever-changing global opportunities and challenges, the Center for Strategic and Inter- national Studies (CSIS) provides strategic insights and practical policy solutions to decisionmak- ers. CSIS conducts research and analysis and develops policy initiatives that look into the future and anticipate change. Founded by David M. Abshire and Admiral Arleigh Burke at the height of the Cold War, CSIS was dedicated to the simple but urgent goal of finding ways for America to survive as a nation and prosper as a people. Since 1962, CSIS has grown to become one of the world’s preeminent public policy institutions. Today, CSIS is a bipartisan, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. More than 220 full-time staff and a large network of affiliated scholars focus their expertise on defense and security; on the world’s regions and the unique challenges inherent to them; and on the issues that know no boundary in an increasingly connected world. Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn became chairman of the CSIS Board of Trustees in 1999, and John J. Hamre has led CSIS as its president and chief executive officer since 2000. CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views expressed in this publica- tion should be understood to be solely those of the author(s). © 2010 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved. Cover photo: iStockphoto/Pagadesign Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Green dragons : the politics of climate change in Asia : a report of the CSIS Asian Regionalism Ini- tiative / editors, Michael J. Green, Charles W. Freeman III, Amy E. Searight ; contributors, Kiyoaki Aburaki . [et al.]. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-89206-605-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Climatic changes—Asia. 2. Environmental policy—Asia. 3. Asia—Environmental conditions. I. Green, Michael J. II. Freeman, Charles W., III. III. Searight, Amy E. IV. Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.). CSIS Asian Regionalism Initiative. V. Title. QC981.9.C5G74 2011 363.738’74095—dc22 2010041678 Center for Strategic and International Studies 1800 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 Tel: (202) 775-3119 Fax: (202) 775-3199 Web: www.csis.org ii contents Acknowledgments iv 1. Introduction: Navigating the Domestic Politics of Climate Change in Asia 1 Charles W. Freeman III, Michael J. Green, and Amy E. Searight 2. The Politics of Climate Change in Japan 7 Kiyoaki Aburaki 3. Green Growth as a Panacea? The Politics and Economics of Climate Change in South Korea 20 Wonhyuk Lim 4. Climate Change, Climate Politics, and the Climate Business: Domestic Variables and China’s Emissions Reduction Policy 36 Zhu Feng 5. The Politics of Climate Change in India 47 Prem Shankar Jha 6. The Politics of Climate Change in Indonesia 56 Agus P. Sari 7. The Politics of Climate Change in Australia: One of the Greatest Political Challenges of Our Age 74 Malcolm Cook 8. U.S. Domestic Politics of Climate Change 85 Sarah O. Ladislaw About the Contributors 101 | iii acknowledgments This report is a compilation of papers that were written for the Politics of Climate Change in Asia Working Group as a part of a larger CSIS study titled “The Asian Regionalism Initiative.” We thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, whose generous support helped to make this project possible. We also thank our authors from around the region, who contributed their insightful analysis to this report—Kiyoaki Aburaki, Malcolm Cook, Prem Shankar Jha, Sarah Ladislaw, Wonhyuk Lim, Agus P. Sari, and Zhu Feng. On February 9, 2010, our authors traveled through the snow to attend the CSIS Politics of Climate Change Roundtable to discuss their preliminary findings for the study. Ernest Bower, Victor Cha, Bonnie Glaser, Llewelyn Hughes, Barbara Finnamore, David Pumphrey, Teresita Schaffer, Amy Searight, Elizabeth Ward, and Stacy White also participated in the round- table and provided their invaluable feedback. Xiaoqing Lu Boynton of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and Yuko Nakano of the Japan Chair provided research and management help for the project on a day-to-day basis. We also appreciated the tremendous input from Robert Wang and Jeffrey Bean of the Freeman Chair in China Stud- ies, who served as the co-coordinators of the overall CSIS Asia Regionalism Initiative. Thanks are due to Eri Hirano of the Japan Chair and Savina Rupani of the Freeman Chair in China Studies for their administrative assistance throughout the project. Our staff was ably assisted by research in- terns, including Francesca Baruffi, Aileen Cruz, Ted Ho, Lee Ting Wong, Diana Zhang, Luxi Zhou, Catherine Simes, Lynn Huang, Koh Nakamura, and Nicholas Yarosh. We are also grateful to James Dunton and his publications team at CSIS for the report’s production. iv | introduction navigating the domestic politics 1 of climate change in asia Charles W. Freeman III, Michael J. Green, and Amy E. Searight Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant. —Henri Queuille The negotiations held under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN- FCCC) in Copenhagen in December 2009 fell well short of global expectations. The stormy nego- tiations turned into a series of high-stakes political showdowns between major global actors, with an end-game effort to “salvage” a deal at a closed-door meeting among the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.1 In the end, the negotiations failed to produce a new international treaty with binding targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, although they did produce a nonbinding accord that lays out an aspirational goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Still, the Copenhagen Accord does not specify global targets or define the national actions that would be needed to achieve this goal. Instead, nations are asked to make voluntary pledges on actions they plan to take to reduce GHG emissions. Unlike other multilateral negotiating frameworks, such as the negotiations that led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization, the UNFCCC framework does not offer indi- vidual countries a clear opportunity to serve discrete national interests by making concessions in order to gain a broader package of material benefits that will be realized in the near term. Rather, the UNFCCC process is intended to reach an agreement in which near-term national interests are set aside in the interest of future generations of the world as a whole. Concluding a successful UNFCCC process would therefore require the leaderships of participating countries to exercise considerable political courage. Indeed, the result of the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change seems to have its roots less in the science of climate change or in disagreements over appropriate methodologies to reduce global GHG emissions and more in a highly complex interplay of domestic politics carried out on a global stage. The inability of countries to resolve the most contentious issues pertaining to global action on climate change raises the question of whether the UNFCCC framework will work as the main negotiating forum for achieving further progress on mitigating global climate This introduction is a summary of chapter 2 in Asia’s Response to Climate Change and Natural Disasters: Implications for an Evolving Regional Architecture, ed. Robert S. Wang and Jeffrey D. Bean (Washington, D.C.: CSIS, 2010). 1. Sarah O. Ladislaw, “Post-Copenhagen Pathways,” available at http://www.csis.org/energy. | 1 change. Whether or not other frameworks at the regional or global level may be better suited to forge consensuses on key issues, such as emissions targets and an equitable distribution of obliga- tions among countries, ultimately the success of any of these frameworks depends on the domestic politics surrounding climate change issues in key participating countries. The chapters that follow address the climate change debates in seven key countries in the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. These countries collectively represent more than 50 percent of global GHG emissions and, with one exception, are members of all relevant framework discussions on climate change.2 There- fore, reaching a consensus among these countries will be crucial to achieving progress on climate change action at the global and regional levels. Yet these players have taken strikingly different positions on international climate change issues. As a general matter, the sources of national varia- tion among these players can be broken down into 12 broad areas. 1. Developed versus developing economies. The most-discussed variation among participating na- tions is over the responsibility of developing countries to mitigate GHG emissions on the same scale as developed countries that have been the historical source of most atmospheric carbon.