Author: Peter Drysdale

With the dust settled from the G20 summit in Seoul and the APEC summit in Yokohama, trade policy is emerging as the new priority as anxieties grow about a retreat to various forms of protection as the industrial world struggles with economic recovery and the increased competitiveness of the emerging economies as they continued to grow strongly through the crisis.

The immediate focus is on the agenda through 2011. Read more…

Author: Mari Pangestu, Indonesia’s Trade Minister

When APEC was created in the late 1980s, economies were categorised as developed and developing. The major economic powers were part of the G7, which then became G8. The main players were countries from Western Europe, Japan, USA and Canada. Now a number of developing countries have become fast growing emerging economies, and they are fast catching up with the developed countries.

Since 1990 the average annual growth rate of trade between developing countries grew twice the rate of growth of world trade and developing country trade with each other is now 39 per cent of their total trade. Read more…

Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations

There are a couple of certainties about Cancun. It will not bring a global deal. The US will try to focus the agenda on a lack of transparency in China’s emissions control efforts — to cover the fact that the US also brings nothing substantial to the table and is stuck in an anachronistic, fuel-guzzling economy and mindset. Chinese negotiators will arrive with their usual arguments, but equipped with better PR techniques for making sure they aren’t seen as the game stopper — the real lesson they took away from Copenhagen. The poorer countries will clamour for more aid for both mitigation and adaption to climate change. The EU’s credibility among other key players will be slightly dented by its current internal skirmishes on moving from 20 per cent to 30 per cent reductions by 2020. At the end of these two weeks in Mexico, those who aspire to a global deal will be directed towards 2011 and South Africa, and few will believe that it can happen there either. Finally, the summit will be a lot warmer than Copenhagen, and the general world temperature will continue to rise, as the scientists keep telling us.

The conclusion is that big global deals are off – at least for the time being. That’s the short, and somewhat depressing, summary. Read more…

Author: Amitendu Palit, NUS

Oil, gas and coal are three critical natural resources playing major roles in economic growth. All three are essential for augmenting manufacturing and services outputs and increasing national gross domestic product (GDP). Economic histories of China and India for the last two to three decades underline their increasing reliance on these fossil fuels for sustaining high economic growth. Given their current growth trajectories, which are not only high but also manufacturing and services intensive, there is little possibility of them reducing their dependence on these energy sources.

Both countries are in search of energy-efficient processes. However, achieving energy efficiency is not easy. Read more…

Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU

Corruption in India is, of course, nothing new. But the recent accusations appear to put the country into the category of one of the worst African ‘cleptocracies’. They have also paralysed the Indian parliament and gravely damaged the reputation of the hitherto successful Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh. The following account of some recent cases gives a sense of the scale and cost of corruption in India.

Former Mines Minister and Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, is in jail on allegations of having syphoned off about US$1 billion, mainly from corrupt mining deals, during his short tenure. Read more…

Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

Tonga’s first-ever democratic elections took place smoothly on Thursday, and resulted in a resounding victory for those urging reform. ‘Akilisi Pohiva’s Friendly Islands Democracy Party won 12 of the 17 popularly elected seats, just two short of the number required to form a government. The other five popularly elected MPs are independents, who at least in theory could team up with Tonga’s nine noble MPs to form a government. The nobles, however, have made clear that they – and indeed King George Tupou V – prefer that Tonga’s next prime minister should come from among the people’s representatives. For the first time in Tonga’s history, therefore, the outcome of a general election will determine the shape of the country’s next government.

Since King George Tupou I unified the scattered island group in the mid-19th century, Tonga has had royal-appointed governments. The 1875 constitution created a Legislative Assembly, but the king retained authority to appoint members of cabinet, including the prime minister. Read more…

Author: Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University

On November 22 a leading US nuclear scientist reported seeing facilities which suggest that Pyongyang has got much further in enriching uranium than had been thought. As if that were not bombshell enough, next day North Korean artillery without warning shelled military and civilian targets on Yeonpyeong: one of five South Korean islands in the Yellow Sea, close to North Korea. Two marines and two civilians were killed, 18 persons were injured. The won fell and stock markets in Seoul remained volatile for the rest of the week, but did not plummet.

Anger and disarray in Seoul

The political fallout went deeper. There was fury that the South yet again seemed impotent against Northern aggression. This also had an air of déjà vu, six months after Seoul accused Pyongyang of culpability for sinking the Cheonan. Then as now the South threatened to strike back – next time. Read more…

Author: Peter Sheehan, Victoria University

The COP15 meeting at Copenhagen in December 2009 has been a watershed in international climate negotiations, both in terms of outcomes and of our understanding of the problems involved in reaching agreement. Widely regarded as a failure because no universal, binding agreement to reduce emissions was achieved, it did produce two notable outcomes: a shared commitment to hold peak global warming to less than 2⁰C and the provision by many countries, under the framework of the Copenhagen Accord, of new commitments to reduce future emissions. It also sharpened debate about what type of agreement should be aimed for – top down or bottom up, legally binding or not, and so on.

As observed in the East Asia Forum by Dr Stephen Howes, COP15 collapsed under the weight of inflated expectations. Read more…

Author: Seiji Ikkatai, Kyoto University

Japan’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the 1990 base year to 2007 have been increasing en route to achieving the 2008-12 Kyoto Protocol target of 6 per cent reduction. Since 1997, when Japan adopted the Protocol, a raft of climate change mitigation policies have been developed to reduce emissions across different sectors. A set of voluntary mechanisms, strongly advocated by the Japanese Federation of Economic Organisations, have been implemented to reduce emissions in the industry sector. For households and offices, the main measures used to reduce emissions have been environmental education and information dissemination. Some regulations have been introduced that can improve energy efficiency, but they cannot influence GHG emission volumes.

Moreover, there are subsidies and tax reductions or exemptions available to assist in replacing old facilities with highly energy-efficient ones, especially among small industries. Read more…

Author: Junichi Fujino, NIES

It is highly likely that there is going to be a gap between the Kyoto Protocol commitment period (2008-2012) and the commitment period thereafter. Industrialised countries such as Japan and the United States are facing difficulties passing climate change bills. Under such circumstances, it will be difficult to expect an agreement on a post-Kyoto framework at the 16th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Cancun, Mexico. Even if the international community were able to agree on one at COP17 next year, it would nonetheless be difficult to obtain a sufficient number of ratifications for it to enter into force in 2012.

One Chinese energy expert stated recently, in conversation on the topic of China’s target for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, ‘China has played the card of reducing emissions regardless of what other states do. The United States has not yet passed the bill through Congress. Japan’s plan is conditional, leaving its actual emissions cut uncertain. Now it is your turn to play a card.’ Read more…