Search

New generation' free trade agreements now include 'Trade and Sustainable Development' (TSD) chapters designed to improve environmental provisions within overall trading arrangements. The wide-ranging European Union (EU)-Japan agreement of 2018 represents the culmination of a trend towards the greater inclusion of such TSD elements, and, as it covers one-third of global GDP, the significance of this agreement for trading relations cannot be understated. Comparing it with other agreements involving Japan and the EU, I argue that greater attention to sustainable development in trade connections, notwithstanding tangible significant environmental improvements, further embeds an anthropocentric narrative of trade-environment linkages and supports a 'win–win' linkage between enhancing economic growth and ensuring environmental protections. Through an eco-centric critique, I seek to challenge the fundamental anthropocentric assumptions underpinning such inclusions and explore the ways in which the language of environmental protection and climate change has been depoliticised by a particular framing of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'climate leadership' became popular in the 1990s, in relation to international negotiations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental mitigations. Since that time, international attention – borne out by scientific study and a rapidly changing planetary climate - has shifted from global warming, the ozone layer and greenhouse gas emissions, to energy production, scientific innovation, and, by the 2020s, a strong focus on decarbonisation and securing net zero carbon output by the middle of the century. One important strand of negotiation has been the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which have witnessed different states playing lead roles at different times. By interrogating the main academic debates about climate leadership, this article examines Japan's participation in the COP process along a structural-normative axis. In so doing, it charts the path from Japan's apparent success at Kyoto in 1997 and its growing green reputation, to its subsequent 'fall from green' in later years and in the wake of COP26 in 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that the creation of a legacy by students enables them to situate their time and experiences at university within their broader life goals and expectations. Legacy learning refers to the act of creating an archive or artefact for the benefit of posterity; collating, collecting and creating a virtual or tangible article, or objet, for successive cohorts to utilise as a learning resource. It is also a tangible product that students may use to demonstrate their skills to prospective employers; something to take away with them from the process of learning. At the heart of the concept are two key factors: collaboration and the process of self-reflection. This article illustrates legacy learning through the examination of a final year module on Asia for which small groups of students had to produce a documentary video and individual self-reflection paper. Although the putative goal of the endeavour was envisioned as the realisation of the documentary itself, the self-reflection exercise by students suggests that the underlying learning value of the exercise may in fact rest in the self-realisation of the learner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the current attempt by the European Union and Japan to negotiate a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA). Sitting alongside negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), this SPA represents an attempt to reignite bilateral relations between these two global powerhouses. Still confined by the origins of their institutionalised partnership in 1991, this article argues that both sides find it hard to break away from earlier functional and normative assumptions about their relative significance and about each other, in order to forge a new meaningful, overarching partnership. It examines the development of Japan–EU relations building up to the preparations for this SPA, against the background of path-dependent processes of engagement. Path dependency in its various forms ‘views institutions as ‘carriers of history,’ which maintain existing behavioural norms and cultural patterns throughout time’. Despite some of the problems such claims elicit, as will be explored below, this article proposes that path dependency – and a particular focus on ‘imprinting’ – offers a useful starting point for explaining the apparent institutional inertia and incremental change that characterise much of this bilateral relationship today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]