Uneven Integration and Blocked Spillovers: Why Environmental Governance in Northeast Asia does not Converged to the EU Model?

The EU environmental governance is recognized as an effective path to the management of regional environment. This model is based on rules, directives, top-bottom coordination and also in the characteristics of multi-level governance, which has become an example for various regions to imitate in the world. By contrast, environmental governance in Northeast Asia, equally with a strong demand in dynamic cooperation, failed to deal with the increasing environmental problems and  it also doesn’t converge to the EU environmental governance over the years. Instead, it established a non-binding cooperation in nature. The Northeast Asia model is a kind of cooperation lack of effectiveness, coordination between regional environmental regimes, without a stable financial arrangement for each cooperative initiative, mainly dominated by the governments, and also lacking of other actors involved in environmental issues. This model is caused by regional security tension which changes the cooperation preference overall, nations especially between China and Japan do not share political trust in high politics. This situation makes regional environmental governance to be a more independent area, with rarely high political interference and without spillover channels to other issues. Theoretically speaking, the Northeast Asia cooperation in environment is based on inter-governmental arrangements, thus, Neo-Functionalism’s spillover effects were significantly inhibited. That means to enhance environmental governance in Northeast Asia will mainly rely on intergovernmental push in the future.