State , Institution, and Environmental Governance: Special reference to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan

By Addinul Yakin (Faculty of Agriculture, Mataram University, Indonesia)

This paper tried to explore some insights on practices of environmental governance in Asia notably in three Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. The three countries have laid down wide-range of environmental laws, regulations, and policies to promote sustainable development. However, up do date, those three countries still very much rely on command control approach in mitigating environmental problems, therefore, state still plays a crucial role in implementation and enforcement of environmental policies. In this regard, institutional arrangement becomes very important to execute good environmental governance. The effective participation of local governments in promoting sustainable development that has been successfully practiced in Japan may become a good example for other Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia in handling environmental problems.

The ultimate goal of environmental governance is full compliance of legal environmental requirements and obligations and attainment of favored changes of environmental quality. In this sense, enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies is vital role to achieve compliance within the regulated community and to correct or halt situations that endanger the environment and public health. Enforcement usually includes inspections and monitoring, negotiations, legal pursuit (when necessary), and may include compliance promotion. The usual factors that affect compliance include deterrence, economics, institutional credibility and accountability, knowledge and technical feasibility, and social and psychological factors. However, these sorts of expertise and capability have been quite weak in developing countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Lack of resources as well as work force and administrative constraints have hampered the effectiveness of extremely costly monitoring and enforcement costs of handling environmental problems. The rent seeking behavior of officials and ineffective bureaucracy often weakens the enforcement efforts (Panayatou, 1991). Therefore, how environmental problems are governed becomes imperative to promote better environmental governance. In this relation, introducing economic instruments and voluntary actions by business sectors should be much more encouraged. At the same time, collective actions by NGOs through protests and disputes are also promoted to pressure either the governments or business sectors to exercise their functions and responsibilities for environmental protection. Finally, mainstreaming environmental concerns and commitments is the ultimate challenge for all governments in Asia not only for decision makers themselves but also for all segments of society leading to better environmental governance in the future.

Full paper could be downloaded from: http://www.unram.academia.edu/AddinulYakin/Papers