Regional Action and Carbon Trading in the East Asia Pacific

In this chapter we explore the potential for coordinated climate policy action in the East Asia Pacific, in terms of carbon trading, in the absence of a unifying EU style institutional architecture. We consider whether there is any role for such action that is beyond the domestic and regional efforts of individual countries, and what it might entail. We look for lessons from regional carbon trading systems that have been implemented elsewhere, and at the potential connectivity of these. We then review the carbon-trading efforts of countries in the East Asia Pacific and the potential for a regionally specific, yet distinctive carbon-trading scheme in the East Asia Pacific. Such an arrangement would need to reflect regional governance complexities and the values of the "Asian Way" in contrast to the EU’s and North American schemes and may rely upon connectivity between polycentric action on a sub-regional and regional basis.