Environment

This dossier takes a number of snapshots into long-term trends in nuclear energy policy and the new debates around the issue since 2022 in different countries and territories in East Asia. Authors from the region discuss whether the announcements about expansion of nuclear power made in 2022-23 have substance and imply actual policy changes, perhaps even an about-turn in energy policy. They also ask what the policies towards nuclear power imply for the development of renewable energies and thus analyse the overall direction of the energy transition towards low-emission power in Asia.

Perspectives Asia is a publication series of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung published in cooperation with the offices of the foundation in Asia. With this series, we intend to provide a German and European readership with an understanding of Asian perspectives, as well as an analysis of global trends and greater insights into developments and current political issues across the Asian region. Perspectives Asia focuses mainly on East, Southeast and South Asia where the foundation has established offices.

Digitalization, genomics, climate geoengineering: A range of new and emerging technologies impact upon farming, food production and biodiversity. Many of them promise productivity growth and better sustainability, and even to address climate change by means of mitigation or increased resilience to it. However, small-scale farming communities often have neither access to – nor a say in the application of – these new technologies, some of which are high-risk, threatening potentially irreversible change to our planet. In a series of essays and commentaries undertaken on the occasion of the Biodiversity Convention COP 2021-22 in Kunming, the ETC Group and others authors from the hbs network in Asia discuss technologies, the imagined futures that underpin them, and their actual and potential impacts on food production, farming communities and biodiversity, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region.