Regional policy coordination: possible future directions

Abstract

There are at least three imperatives for the regional policy coordination of environmental protection and regulation programs of individual ASEAN states. One comes from the increasing importance of problems related to the management of regional environmental "commons". The depletion of commonly exploited stocks and pollution of the East Asian Seas is leading to unmistakable economic and welfare losses of individual states sharing this resource. With the increasing degradation of these commonly utilized regional resources, the need to coordinate individual state approaches to the use and management of these resources become increasingly recognized. Increased degradation can only be addressed by more restrictions in individual access and utilization. Increased degradation also means that the resource is getting scarcier which, coupled with the need for more restrictions, can lead to conflict and inconsistency of individual state actions.