NEWS

2024.09.25

【Report】 The AJI International Workshop was held! “Unpacking the Rise of Green Developmentalism in Southeast and Northeast Asia”

On July 27, 2024, an International Workshop on “Unpacking the Rise of Green Developmentalism in Southeast and Northeast Asia” was held in a hybrid way on campus and online, and co-organized with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University.

The overarching aim of the workshop was to foster exchange among scholars of their ongoing works in environmental politics, energy transitions, and green financing. Specialists from diverse areas of knowledge sitting at the intersection of political economy, geography, and international relations introduced their recent publications and ongoing research activities. Presenters from Hong Kong, Australia, the United States, and Japan attended in person whereas three discussants joined virtually. The workshop was divided into two sessions based upon regional focus – Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia and moderated interchangeably by Dr Trissia Wijaya (Ritsumeikan University) and Dr Julie de los Reyes (Kyoto University).

The first session started with a presentation by Professor Vivian Chan (Chinese University of Hong Kong) on “Embedded extraction: The Chinese State’s Response to Local Resource Curse” which is based on her new book published by Cambridge University Press. By introducing a number of case studies on Chinese state-owned enterprises’ mining activities to the discussion, Professor Chan traced how the Chinese state has coped with the “curses” of local resource exploitation such as the adverse environmental, economic, and sociopolitical impacts of resource extraction, by requiring offending companies to pay back to the affected local communities. In the second presentation, focusing on Japan-led green initiatives in the region, Associate Professor Akihisa Mori (Kyoto University) provided an analysis of different scenarios undertaken by Japan-linked financing alternatives in order to phase out coal burning, including JETP (Just Energy Transition Partnership). He also highlighted how green financing has been met with resistance from vested interests, particularly relative to rent-seeking over critical minerals. Associate Professor Kim Sungyoung (Macquarie University) joined online and presented his recent work on the green industrial policy in South Korea based upon his recently published co-authored book Developmental Environmentalism. He investigated the shifting patterns of state-business relationships in South Korea and the institutional basis that enabled the realization of a “green” industrial policy, which he termed “hybridized industrial ecosystems” in his research. On the one hand, the wealthy chaebol has gradually tapped into renewable energy projects, while on the other hand, the Korean government has been seeking to make a policy breakthrough for decades by providing seed funding to industry, organizing R&D projects, and articulating long-term visions. The first session closed with a discussion session led by Associate Professor Wu Fengshi (University of New South Wales) and Associate Professor Sun Yixian (University of Bath).

The second panel started with a presentation by Associate Professor Jessica C. Liao (North Carolina University) on “Vietnam’s Stumbling Path towards Energy Transition in the Era of Geopolitics.” By relocating green developmentalism in the context of geopolitics and domestic politics, she examined how Vietnam’s energy transitions plan has changed over the past two decades and outlined factors which have driven such changes. She advanced the logic of the political survival of the Communist Party of Vietnam and identified four factors which underpin Vietnam’s green energy plan, namely: affordability, supply chain security, energy industry interests, and climate and environmental goals. The next presentation was by Associate Professor Tyler Harlan (Loyola Marymount University and University of Melbourne). His research asked a fundamental question about how China has been shaping Southeast Asia’s energy system by using a case study of Laos. He also showed how China has been playing pivotal role in shaping a green smart grid in Southeast Asia through its Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO). The third panelist of the second session was Assistant Professor Julie de los Reyes (Ritsumeikan University). By engaging certain case studies in the Philippines, she identified a new regime reshaping the energy transition in the Philippines, namely the “anti-developmental state.” While the Philippines has been engaging with a number of regional and global initiatives, including ones led by the United States, such as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and the US-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit, investments in green infrastructure and renewable energy have barely come to realization. This is because the Philippines tends to maintain anti-developmental tendencies as a prerequisite to drive the impetus for energy transitions. The final speaker, Dr. Trissia Wijaya (Ritsumeikan University) presented her recent fieldwork findings on the political economy of mineral processing for EV batteries in Indonesia. Bringing the critical political economy into perspective, she analyzed the social foundation of mineral processing in Indonesia that binds different politico-economic groups – including fossil capital and Chinese companies – together under the mantle of energy transitions. She also examined how particular business groups and political elites rearticulated their interests through the EV industry and reshaped green industrial policies in Indonesia. The session closed with a discussion led by Dr Thang Do (Australian National University).

Thus, the workshop has achieved its two key objectives. First, participants emphasized the concept of green developmentalism in the current polycrisis consisting of the US-China trade war, interstate conflicts, climate change, and debt crises. Second, by capturing the nuances and common points across several different case studies, the participants gained a better understanding of the varying strategies and policy divergence/convergence among countries that will lead to a variety of green developmentalism in the region. Crucially, all presenters and discussants promised to promote their academic network on energy transition and environmental politics and increase their collaboration in the future.