Making and Unmaking of Transnational Environmental Cooperation

There has been an ongoing debate about how (or through what mechanisms) global environmental norms have influenced domestic political debates that give rise to green policy choices. In particular, effective international environmental cooperation between transnational NGOs and domestic NGOs has been recognized as a reflection of how the principles of environmental norms have been successfully applied. As such, the key question guiding research in the politics of environmental norms is, under what condition or conditions would transnational cooperation of NGOs be more likely to achieve its goals? The case study on wetland reclamation projects in Japan and Korea have revealed that unlike the common top-down approach to transnational cooperation, domestic environmental NGOs with larger resources, challenging ideology, more contentious mode of protest to dominant paradigm are more likely to nurture, develop and sustain transnational cooperation for environmental norms. As will be seen in the paper, Korean NGOs are more successful in their cause than their Japanese counterparts because they are more organized and have a larger membership base with distinctiv