Environmental Challenges and Governance - Diverse perspectives from Asia (Hardcover)

The economies located in East, South and Southeast Asia have witnessed an interesting growth-sustainability trade-off over the last decades. The forces of globalization and increasing population pressure necessitated exploitation of hitherto unutilized natural resources in several countries. Consequently, the concerns over air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change (e.g. CO2 emissions) etc. have emerged as major challenges.

The book analyzes the way in which environmental governance has evolved in leading Asian countries from three vibrant regions within Asia. The chapters included in the book attempts to understand the state of environment and environmental governance scenario in the selected countries in terms of their environmental management and natural recourse conservation policies, managing the impacts of growing urbanization and industrialization and climate change related concerns etc. The experience of countries included in the volume enables the reader to appreciate the holistic development dimension of sustainable development path, as policies adopted by both developed (Japan), developing (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) and least developed countries (Bangladesh, Nepal) has been covered. The final chapter attempts to synthesize the policy conclusions and recommendations of individual country chapters and tires to draw lessons for countries located in comparable development plane.

The chapters included in the current volume are contributed by leading academicians, researchers and practitioners involved in the applied aspects of environmental economics in Asian countries and elsewhere. The country experiences described here will provide academic and policy inputs for academicians, policy makers and members of civil society organisations in developing and less developed countries facing similar challenges.