Asia’s Wicked Environmental Problems

Stephen Howes and Paul Wyrwoll
Additional contact information
Stephen Howes: Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)

Governance Working Papers from East Asian Bureau of Economic Research

Abstract: The developing economies of Asia are confronted by serious environmental problems that threaten to undermine future growth, food security, and regional stability. This study considers four major environmental challenges that policymakers across developing Asia will need to address towards 2030 : water management, air pollution, deforestation and land degradation, and climate change. We argue that these challenges, each unique in their own way, all exhibit the characteristics of “wicked problems†. As developed in the planning literature, and now applied much more broadly, wicked problems are dynamic, complex, encompass many issues and stakeholders, and evade straightforward, lasting solutions. Detailed case studies are presented to illustrate the complexity and significance of Asia’s environmental challenges, and also their nature as wicked problems. The most important implication of this finding is that there will be no easy or universal solutions to environmental problems across Asia. This is a caution against over-optimism and blueprint or formulaic solutions. It is not, however, a counsel for despair. We suggest seven general principles which may be useful across the board. These are : a focus on co-benefits; an emphasis on stakeholder participation; a commitment to scientific research; an emphasis on long-term planning; pricing reform; tackling corruption, in addition to generally bolstering institutional capacity with regard to environmental regulation; and a strengthening of regional approaches and international support.

Keywords: Environmental Problems; Asia; developing economies of Asia; developing Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O44 O53 Q28 Q53 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-env and nep-res
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eaber.org/node/23289 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.eaber.org/node/23289 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.eaber.org/node/23289 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://eaber.org/node/23289)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eab:govern:23289

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Governance Working Papers from East Asian Bureau of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shiro Armstrong ().