The Paradigm Shift in The Greening of Northeast Asia: Soft-Institution Building

Despite significant institutional developments in Northeast Asia aimed at addressing the region's serious marine pollution problems, the complex geopolitical situation of Northeast Asia has created many doubts about the effectiveness of these current initiatives. The traditional approach of hard-institution building, successfully used in the Mediterranean region to meet its own pollution issues, is unlikely to work in Northeast Asia. Northeast Asia may need a fundamentally different approach to tackling its pollution problems if it is to achieve effective clean-up of its regional seas. This paper argues that a soft-institution building approach may be the answer to Northeast Asia's difficulties in building a truly effective environmental regime