Environment and sustainable energy development in the Asia-Pacific region

The majority of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region are mainly developing countries. To them, the sustainable development of energy resources appears to be a constant challenge at a time when there seems to be the tendency to opt for economic development at the expense of environment. However, it has to be appreciated that in reality the right to sustainable development belongs to people and not to government. The purpose of this article is to focus on certain important current legal issues of sustainable energy development in many of the developing countries of Asia Pacific. Section I will highlight the dilemma of development v environment—a characteristic feature in environmental regulation in the Third World—in the region. Section II will trace the inadequacy of provision for environmental protection in international energy development agreements and in the legislative regime there. Section III will be concerned with the present state and policy trends relating to sustainable energy development issues in the Asia-Pacific region horizontally. Section IV will evaluate certain recently emerging approaches to deal with the matter of sustainable development when government proves to be part of the problem and when there is little or no effective environmental regulation for the protection of the environment. In Section V, some concluding remarks will be made.