The number of international environmental treaties has surged since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Private regimes initiated by non-state actors, such as non-governmental organizations, have also expanded to tackle global environmental issues. The establishment of multiple private regimes in same environmental issues led to the formation of private regime complexes. In addition, the UN initiative of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a sort of governance through goals, has started since 2015. The high institutional density and diversity in public and private spheres led to the explosion of academic literature on global environmental governance. However, in contrast to the substantial post-war improvement in other global governance issues such as peace, trade, development, and human rights, the state of global environmental problems has worsened in most cases. The progress of SDGs is also slow in terms of environmental goals, and they will most probably not be able to meet the targets by 2030. The approach of governance through goals is not successful in the prevention or control of climate change and biodiversity loss, either. The Paris Agreement on climate change intended to restrict the rise of global surface temperature to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the bottom-up approach of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). However, it is simulated that the increase in global surface temperature will soon exceed the target of 1.5 degrees and reach 3.1 degrees in 2030. The Convention on Biodiversity set the Aichi Targets in 2010 to speed down global biodiversity loss. However, parties to the convention failed to attain all of the twenty individual targets set in Aichi Targets by 2020. Responding to the public governance deficit in biodiversity conservation, private sustainability certification schemes have proliferated in agricultural, forestry, and seafood products. However, as effective biodiversity conservation requires comprehensive national plans of land utilization and economy, the potential of private sustainability regimes to fill the governance gap is limited. Can the academic research of global environmental governance not develop the wisdom to tackle the classic problems of economics, such as the tragedy of commons and market failure, by governance without government? This special issue is published on this problem recognition. It consists of seven case study articles, four of which are related to climate change, two to agriculture and forestry, and one to big science in global environmental problems. Several important issues, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, and Japan’s engagement in global environmental governance, are missing in this volume, highlighting the importance of extending the research scope in the Japanese study of global environmental governance.

Germany is the frontrunner in energy transition (Energiewende). “Energiewende” was originally used as the title of the report published by the Öko-Institut in 1980 - “Growth and prosperity without nuclear and oil”, which meant “breaking away from the dependence on nuclear and oil”, both representing large-scale technologies. Since the SPD-Greens coalition government decided to phase out nuclear power in 2002 and the CDU/CSU-FDP under the Merkel administration decided to accelerate the nuclear phase-out in 2011 after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, this term has been diffused worldwide. With the diffusion and the wake of the climate change issue, the definition changed from the 1980 original to the transformation from the fossil-fuel dependent society to decarbonized one. Therefore, Energiewende requires at least renewable energy promotion policy, energy efficiency policy, coal phase-out, and electricity network development, with nuclear power being an option. Despite unfavorable climatic and geographic conditions, Germany has so far been successful in promoting renewables, and phasing out nuclear as well as coal. The country aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 65% in 2030 and to realize decarbonization by 2045. Why has Germany been able to select this ambitious transition pathway? This article analyzes the factors explaining Germany’s Energiewende by focusing on the effects of catalysts (focusing event, crisis, shock) on non-incremental policy change and, ultimately, the paradigmatic shift towards decarbonization. This article classifies catalysts into three groups; 1) governing coalition change; 2) the impact of decisions taken at different governance levels or different policy areas; and 3) shocks in energy policy area, and illuminates the different effects of the three groups of catalysts. By examining whether and how catalysts affected on actors’ positions through their interests and beliefs, and induced non-incremental changes in three critical policies (renewable promotion, nuclear phase-out, and coal phase-out), the article highlights the following; 1) the reunification (the second group) was critical in distracting incumbents’ attention from energy policy and promoting renewables, which was further expanded by government change to the SPD- Greens coalition (the first group); 2) the governing coalition change was also important in phasing out nuclear in addition to two nuclear catastrophes in Chernobyl and Fukushima (the third group), which drastically changed actors’ positions by affecting their beliefs; 3) finally without the climate crisis (the third group), the coal phase-out would not have been decided. By overviewing this process, the article concludes that catalysts were probably sufficient to realize each non-incremental policy change; however, a long-term paradigmatic shift, such as Germany’s Energiewende, is not realized spontaneously; and policymakers or entrepreneurs are required to strategically utilize opportunity-windows distracting incumbents’ attention (e.g., reunification) and to control the interaction and the sequence of multiple non-incremental policy changes in order to affect incumbents’ interests.

As climate change has increasingly become a serious issue in recent years, more attention has been paid to the industrial sector as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The most important sector in this regard is the oil and gas industry. While this sector holds the key to a successful transition to a decarbonized society, it has unsurprisingly found it difficult to part with a profitable fossil-fuel based economy as evinced by its long-term opposition to carbon emissions reduction.

Yet, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), which was launched back in 2014, made a commitment to zero carbon emissions in 2021, and in the following year the leading companies accordingly set their net-zero emission targets. How has this about-face occurred, given their vested interest in a fossil-fuel-based economy? Can one explain this behavioral change simply as an instance of voluntary actions by private actors as numerous studies in transnational governance research would suggest? This article argues otherwise: this initiative and the target-setting that ensued among the major oil and gas companies have in large measure been facilitated by changes in the investment strategies of the financial sector, which had the effect of altering the interest calculation of the industry. To suggest this impact of the financial sector, the authors first discuss how the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), an initiative launched by the former governor of the Bank of England, has harmonized the net-zero transition framework for both the financial sector as well as real-economy corporates, rendering commercial investments conditional on the disclosure of climate-related risks, credible transition and/or asset phase-out plans by the corporates. The authors then conduct the text-mining analysis of key oil and gas companies’ sustainability reports to measure the impact of the financial sector on the perceptions of these companies toward decarbonization. This analysis has shown that the oil and gas industry came to adopt its net-zero transition strategy after the formation of the financial alliance in question, although its voluntary actions had started much sooner already at the time of the negotiation of the Paris Agreement.

From this theoretically-informed case study, the authors then conclude that the adaptation of the oil and gas industry to its transition risks associated with stranded assets has been greatly facilitated by the globally concerted action by the financial sector to provide an external feedback mechanism to the industry through the allocation of capital. As such, the emergence of a hetero-autonomous structure in which the autonomous adaptation of actors is facilitated by the heteronomous actions by other actors has played a critical role in changing the nature of climate governance.

The Paris Agreement (adopted in 2015 and entered into force in 2016) set the principal goal of holding “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and making efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” It also aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, an ambitious goal of balancing man-made GHG emissions and their removal in the second half of the 21st century. To achieve these efforts, all the Parties to the Paris Agreement are required to submit their plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Each Party is expected to extend an “increasingly higher degree of ambition” at its discretion in successive NDCs. However, the UN Environmental Programme’s “Emission Gap Report” (2023) warned the world that even if all the submitted NDCs are implemented, the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal would not be achieved.

It is necessary to break away from dependence on fossil fuels and create a decarbonized society to arrest global warming while seeking energy transitions to renewable energy. In December 2019, the European Union (EU) announced the “European Green Deal” aiming towards “Climate Neutral,” which means net zero GHG emissions by 2050. The EU leads the world in achieving decarbonization by promoting renewable energies and establishing a taxonomy system for environmentally sustainable economic activities (the EU Taxonomy). Meanwhile, the international community is concerned about meeting the rapidly increasing demand for scarce critical minerals for renewable technologies and devices, such as wind and solar power, electric vehicles, and storage batteries, essential ingredients for decarbonizing the world.

This article recognizes that the management of critical minerals and the promotion of sustainable finance/investment, which support the energy transition, play an indispensable role in providing the essential resources for achieving the temperature target of the Paris Agreement through climate change mitigation policies. Based on this recognition, this article describes the current state of the two fields of activity. First, regarding managing critical minerals, this article takes up the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) case. Second, the EU Taxonomy has been chosen as a case study for addressing sustainable finance and investment concerns. This study analyzes the development processes, current situation, and challenges of these two governance frameworks.

The Mekong region, which forms the core of ASEAN, has achieved remarkable economic growth, but in the process has faced common regional threats such as the Asian currency crisis, the global financial crisis, and the new coronavirus infection crisis. This paper focused on the threat posed by climate change as the next crisis common to the region, and argued that the higher the climate change crisis, the more important it becomes to establish electricity security. Laos, which is referred to as the battery of the Mekong, is an important country in terms of electricity security for countries in the region. However, faced with slowing economic growth, chronic budget deficits, a falling domestic currency, and rising public debt, it is not easy for Laos to proactively take measures to avoid or mitigate the effects of climate change. If climate change further increases the vulnerability of the implementation system and further worsens the economic situation of Laos, the environment surrounding electricity security will become even more challenging.

This paper also argued that in addition to climate change, Laos faces a complex interplay of three factors: a fragile electricity implementation system, international politics with neighboring countries, and the interaction of these factors with electricity security. The establishment of electricity security in Laos is a cornerstone for building stable international relations with neighboring countries. The threat of climate change to electricity security is also shown to be closely related to other forms of security, such as economic security. Elaboration of the discussion on climate change and electricity security in Laos from the perspective of international politics will contribute to the discussion on peace and development in the Mekong region and ASEAN.

The protection and conservation of the global environment had become an international norm widely accepted in various sectors by the late 20^th century; however, this was not the case in the agri-food sector. It established the “food security regime,” prioritizing the eradication of hunger and increase in food production. The environmental impact concerns were focused on local impacts associated with farming practices, such as water pollution resulting from fertilizer use.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, over 180 countries adopted the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action to eradicate hunger. However, protecting and conserving the global environment was considered a counter-norm to food security. The developing countries objected to focusing on the environment owing to their limited capacity; they were concerned that an environmental focus could generate new trade barriers.

Three factors behind this backlash can be identified. First, food security was not considered to align with the environmental issue within the regime. Second, development aid had stagnated, and there was limited anticipation that technological innovation would increase food production. Third, trade rules, including the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture, disciplined food aid, and government expenditure aimed at enhancing production. Thus, the developing countries were forced to find solutions to overcome these challenges.

However, this situation changed significantly during the 2010s when the developing countries observed an increase in their financial aid and private investments; moreover, biotechnologies, such as tissue culture and DNA markers, were introduced in these countries for plant disease prevention and effective breeding. The aid agencies encouraged implementing digital technologies, facilitating increased agricultural production. Regarding trade rules, the WTO Doha Development Agenda focused on environmental issues; no significant outcome or agricultural negotiations were agreed upon. Instead, the developed countries tried to include environmental clauses in their Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) by fixing trade terms, helping ease the concerns of developing countries. Additionally, RTAs enhanced investment and built cooperation, allowing developing countries to accept global environmental norms. Finally, the Sustainable Development Goals, with the efforts of the Food and Agriculture Organization, established the integration of the environment and food security. Many agri-businesses supported this idea in their policies, and the developing countries engaged in transactions with these businesses found it advantageous to accept global environmental norms.

Recently, private standards based on third-party certification, such as those from the International Standard Organization (ISO), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Marine Stewardship Counsil (MSC), have emerged as significant regulatory mechanisms in global environmental governance. These standards function as global sustainable rules in scenarios where intergovernmental negotiations on environmental issues such as climate change fail and address deficiencies in public environmental regulation.

As these private certification schemes become more widespread globally, various issues arise. Some critics highlight the fragmentation caused by competition among private standards, which exacerbates information asymmetries regarding the scope and rigor of sustainability for businesses and consumers. Others highlight a “race to the bottom,” where the strictness of standards is diluted to accommodate business demands for lower transaction costs. Furthermore, a private standard may not effectively address current environmental challenges because its policies and goals are shaped by its own philosophy and interests, whether driven by business-oriented organizations or environmental NGOs.

The objective of this paper is to explore the modes of meta-governance led by public authorities to address these issues and to elucidate the conditions that foster specific types of meta-governance.

Drawing on literature about global governance modes, I explore two types of governance that public authorities can use as meta-regulatory activities in relation to private standards: (1) “delegation,” characterized by stringent control by the governing body, and (2) an indirect, soft inducement mechanism. The “delegation” type involves public actors intervening in standard-setting bodies to systematically align with public environmental policy goals within a legal framework. The indirect meta-governance approach includes setting a meta-standard to serve as a reference frame for private certification schemes (“performance setting” governance) and providing a multistakeholder deliberation process to enhance private governance through discussion, peer review, reporting, and more (“deliberation process-based” governance).

This paper evaluates two instances of meta-governance initiated by the European Union (EU) since the 2010s: the European Standardization System within the context of EU environmental policy and the EU Timber Regulation, which addresses illegal logging within and beyond the EU’s borders. In the European Standardization System, member states and environmental NGOs have agreed on a systematic approach with European regional standard bodies to closely link EU environmental policy with the standard-setting process, overcoming the issue of “fragmentation.” The EU Timber Regulation, as a “deliberative process-based” meta-governance, is shaped by political processes marked by discrepancies among member states and stakeholders and the limited liability of private certification scheme such as FSC.

Big Science, characterized by interdisciplinary and international cooperation, encompasses large-scale, long-term scientific and technological projects that require substantial funding and significant human resources. Contemporarily, Big Science has evolved into multidisciplinary and multinational scientific cooperation programs that generate big data that can be used to address global environmental concerns. Through the past decade, China has emerged as an ambitious latecomer in Big Science projects, and Chinese scientists, as non-state actors, are actively engaging in these projects. However, empirical research on the motives, processes, and outcomes of Chinese-led Big Science initiatives remains under-analyzed in the global environmental governance literature.

Therefore, drawing from science-policy interface theory, this study examines the nature of China’s leadership in Big Science projects on global environmental concerns, including its political background, stated goals, and the role of scientists within an authoritarian regime. China’s contemporary Big Science projects aim to foster science and technology cooperation for diplomatic purposes, enhancing China’s soft power. The government maintains an absolute leadership position over scientists, who, as semi-governmental actors, must adhere to governmental policies. Simultaneously, the Chinese government is open to incorporating scientific policy recommendations from scientists to fill gaps in professional knowledge and achieve its environmental strategies. This challenges the conventional understanding that China’s scientists are fully controlled by the Chinese authoritarian government. Thus, Chinese scientists play a crucial role in proposing and managing Big Science projects. However, their policy proposals are required to align with the broader governmental strategies. For example, scientists need to support the strategy of the One Belt One Road Initiative’s green transformation, known as the “Green One Belt One Road Initiative,” to target the partner countries’ environmental concerns in the projects.

As a case study, this paper considers a major Chinese-led Big Science project, the “Third Pole Environment,” to explore the interactive science-policy interface mechanisms among Chinese scientists, participating countries and their scientists, international organizations, and the Chinese government. While Chinese scientists must navigate the politics of starting up Big Science, they can form a transnational scientific community with foreign scientists and international organizations. This collaboration promotes knowledge sharing and elevates their global academic reputation. The huge amount of environmental data generated under the project has directly contributed to reforming domestic environmental policies in China. Additionally, collaborating with international organizations has provided new scientific knowledge pertaining environmental concerns in participating countries. However, the paper also raises concerns about Chinese-led international Big Science projects, such as the risks of potentially compromising the data sovereignty of participating countries and fueling the expansion of China’s digital hegemony, especially over the partner countries under the “Green One Belt One Road Initiative.”

This study examines the concept of spheres of influence and modern Japanese diplomacy. The concept of spheres of influence, which has been received attention in recent years in the study of modern Japanese diplomatic history, is very complex and important for discussing modern Japanese foreign policies. This paper first analyzes the spheres of influence based on the descriptions in several sources and classifies them into five types: (1) reservation of occupation, (2) mutual recognition among powers, (3) acquisition of rights, (4) adjacent important areas, and (5) under some influence. The study then examines several issues concerning modern Japanese diplomacy and spheres of influence, particularly the relationship between Japan and Manchuria and its related problem of continuity and change in the Japanese diplomacy around World War I.

After the Russo–Japanese War, Japan acquired rights and interests in South Manchuria through the Treaty of Portsmouth with Russia and various agreements with China. Furthermore, Japan concluded agreements with Russia to divide Manchuria into north and south and demarcate them as their respective spheres of influence, and obtained recognition of the division from other powers. In other words, for Japan, South Manchuria was its sphere of influence based on both (2) mutual recognition among powers and (3) acquisition of rights. Simultaneously, it was potentially a sphere of influence as (4) an adjacent important area or (5) an area under some influence.

After World War I, the system in which several powers established their own spheres of influence in China and mutually recognized them collapsed. However, the Japanese government believed that it was still possible to have powers recognize Japan’s special relationship with Manchuria in some way. The Japanese government no longer described Manchuria as a so-called sphere of influence, but in terms of the concept of spheres of influence as an analytical concept, Manchuria could be Japan’s sphere of influence as a type of (3) acquisition of rights, (4) adjacent important areas, or (5) under some influence. While trying to secure interests in Manmō (Manchuria and Inner Mongolia), Japan sought to legitimize the special relationship between Japan and Manmō by emphasizing the adjacency.

In recent years, the notion of spheres of influence has been increasingly referred to in the world primarily against the backdrop of the Russian moves. Although this paper examines the issues related to the spheres of influence only from the perspective of the modern Japanese diplomatic history, it may make a broader contribution to the study of international relations as an attempt to analyze the historical evolution of the concept of spheres of influence.

This paper explores the policy process of China’s diplomacy of normalization toward Japan by focusing on the relationship between China’s perceptions of the international situation and its diplomacy toward Japan in the early 1970s.

China’s diplomacy with Japan in the 1970s began with fierce criticism of Japanese militarism. In addition to distrust of the Sato administration, strong vigilance against U.S. intentions, which stemmed from the U.S. expansion of the Indochina War, was the main cause of China’s criticism. From China’s perspective, the U.S. was abetting Japan’s expansion in Northeast Asia while expanding the war in Indochina. For this reason, high priority was given to forming an anti-U.S. united front. China’s fierce criticism of Japanese militarism was part of this effort.

Subsequently, China’s views on U.S. policy intentions underwent a significant transformation, and the development of détente in Europe led China to realize the need to break the ice in its relations with the U.S. While giving priority to the breakthrough of ties with the U.S., with regards to Japan, China narrowed the target of the united front to the Sato administration and expanded the scope of the united front from the traditional “leftists” to the so-called “centrists” and “business community.” China’s admission to the United Nations and the U.S.-China rapprochement following Nixon’s visit to China greatly impacted Japanese public opinion. The Sato administration’s stance toward China also transformed. Still, China decided not to negotiate with Sato and to wait for the next administration to emerge, based on its judgment that the diplomatic situation was favorable toward it.

While the Sino-American approach gave China an advantage in its diplomatic position vis-à-vis Japan, it also contributed to the U.S.-Soviet détente, a diplomatic development that China did not want to witness. This was because the Soviet Union, wary of the US-China rapprochement, became more flexible toward a US-USSR summit. For China, even though relations with the United States improved, the development of détente between the Soviets and the U.S. meant that China’s diplomatic position was weakened. Thus, a diplomatic breakthrough with Japan came to be recognized as a necessary means of strengthening China’s diplomatic position and, accordingly, was given high diplomatic priority.

By this point, China, which had previously seen the significance of its relations with Japan in an anti-U.S. context, started to see the importance of its diplomacy with Japan from the viewpoint of strengthening China’s diplomatic positioning in the international system.