Environmental Governance and Environmental Performance

Abstract

Along with the continuous development of the global economy, environmental deterioration has been widely recognized as a pressing issue nowadays, bringing environmental governance to the forefront of human survival. Asia, the largest continent in world in terms of both landmass size and population, has long been facing the exhaustive challenge of environmental pollution. We empirically prove that the level of environmental governance, proxied by government expenditure on environmental protection as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), exerts significant impacts on environmental conditions among Asian countries. For Asian countries, basically three main conclusions can be drawn that may be useful for improving the condition of environmental quality: (i) the authority should increase the share of government expenditure on environmental protection, since it contributes significantly to the reduction of CO 2 emissions and the promotion of energy efficiency; (ii) the government should make an effort to control the overheating economic growth, since excessive economic growth is detrimental to the environment, and increasing GDP per capita leads to increasing CO 2 emissions, decreasing energy efficiency, and decreasing comprehensive environmental performance; and (iii) although foreign direct investment has no impact on CO 2 emissions and Environmental Performance Index, it exerts a significantly negative impact on energy intensity and thus promotes an effect on energy efficiency; therefore, we recommend that the government should implement relevant policies to attract more foreign investment.

Climate Change and Sustainability in ASEAN Countries

“…Past empirical studies have compared the environmental performance of Asia, including ASEAN countries, to other regions. These studies utilize the environmental performance index due to its ability to provide a somewhat comprehensive assessment of national environmental performance [18,19]. Chang, Dong and Liu [19] study the difference in environmental governance performance between European countries and Asian countries on environmental performance outcomes and used the country's expenditure on environmental protection to measure the extent of environmental governance.…”

“…These studies utilize the environmental performance index due to its ability to provide a somewhat comprehensive assessment of national environmental performance [18,19]. Chang, Dong and Liu [19] study the difference in environmental governance performance between European countries and Asian countries on environmental performance outcomes and used the country's expenditure on environmental protection to measure the extent of environmental governance. They find that governments' environmental expenditure significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions for Asian countries, but that the same effect did not carry over to improvements in the environmental performance index.…”

Environmental Performance in Asia: Overview, Drivers, and Policy Implications

“…For Asia specifically, it is more often found that GDP growth has been accompanied by the deterioration of environmental quality (Jalal and Rogers 2002), which can be considered indicative of Asian countries' positioning in the left half of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (Chang, Dong, and Liu 2019). In other words, the majority of countries in Asia are currently located in an earlier development stage where resources, attention, and regulatory capacity devoted to environmental governance are insufficient.…”

“…A number of scholars have found that stronger public-sector commitment, measured by government expenditures on environmental protection, is positively correlated with better environmental performance (Ercolano and Romano 2018;Halkos and Paizanos 2013). Chang, Dong, and Liu (2019) showed that a higher ratio of government expenditures on environmental protection to GDP significantly contributes to a reduction of CO 2 emissions and the promotion of energy efficiency. Notably, this effect is more significant among countries in Asia than in Europe, potentially given the stronger reliance on central government regulations in Asian countries and the lack of hybrid partnerships with non-state stakeholders on environmental actions.…”

“…Market-oriented regulations to incentivize stakeholders. Environmental regulation throughout the world is experiencing a transition from the conventional "command-andcontrol" regulation, for instance emission standards, to the market-oriented approach, which includes a series of measures such as eco-taxes and subsidies, voluntary agreements, eco-labeling, and emission trading (Lemos and Agrawal 2006;Chang, Dong, and Liu 2019). Market-oriented policies have the benefits of greater flexibility, less compliance cost, and more importantly incentivizing stakeholders to raise productivity and undertake innovations.…”