Book review: Bihong Huang and Eden Yu (Eds), Ways to Achieve Green Asia 2020

AuthorDevleena Majumdar
Published date01 November 2022
Date01 November 2022
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00157325221104585
Book Review
Bihong Huang and Eden Yu (Eds), Ways to Achieve Green Asia 2020,
Asian Development Bank Institute. 344 pp., ISBN: 978-4-89974-211-1
(Print), ISBN: 978-4-89974-212-8 (PDF).
Globalisation has a huge impact across the world via integration of economies in
terms of thoughts, culture, ideas, technologies, markets, production processes,
patterns of investments and capital flows, proliferation of international trade etc.
Over the last three decades, almost all the Asian countries have witnessed rapid
economic growth as an outcome of globalisation. The environmental impact of
such growth is inclusive of but not limited to, natural resource exploitations,
water, air, noise pollution, compromised ecosystem and global climate change.
Even though the extant literature and the parallel policymaking circle proposes
due environmental governance via improving the regulatory efficiency, it remains
difficult to implement many of the specifics, in practice. Given this backdrop, 11
chapters of the book under review explore various aspects of environmental and
climate change in Asia. The book is divided into three parts. The first part
overviews the environment and climate change in Asia. The second part offers the
evolution of environmental regulations and governance in Asia and finally, part
three explores the impact of globalisation on environment. I will discuss each
chapter briefly and few chapters illustratively to provide a sense of the depth and
breadth of the topics covered.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of environmental performance index for Asian
countries primarily via portraying their emission per capita, energy use, govern-
ment expenditure on environmental protection, market-oriented regulations, and
technology-driven production techniques that are well-practised. Acknowledging
the fact that climate change is one of the biggest threats that humankind will expe-
rience in the coming centuries, and that many Asian countries are at very high
risk, Chapter 2 highlights the economic impact of climate change based on IPCC’s
assessment report. It discusses country-specific and global strategies to mitigate
future emission scenarios.
In connection to this, Chapter 3 discussed the lessons of environmental
regulations in Asia. In this chapter, the author Jinhua Zhao has identified broadly
two instruments to bring down the environmental emission using both formal and
informal methods. Among the formal methods command and control, pollution
taxes, tradable permits, Coase regulation bargaining are well practiced, whereas
among informal methods, voluntary measures are primarily executed. Chapter 3
Foreign Trade Review
57(4) 497–499, 2022
© 2022 Indian Institute of
Foreign Trade
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DOI: 10.1177/00157325221104585
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