Engaging North Korea: environmental cooperation in peacebuilding

Abstract

Despite ongoing political tensions and sanctions, North Korea and South Korea have made some progress in forestry cooperation. To explain the persistence of this cooperation, we draw upon a local approach to environmental peacebuilding. By tracing inter-Korean forestry cooperation from 2000 to 2018, this study finds that cooperation persists because of a North Korean desire for cooperation specifically on the environment, and because non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with close ties to the South Korean government provided an alternative way to implement inter-Korean forestry cooperation through periods of tension. Our findings also highlight the benefits of using environmental cooperation as a way to engage with North Korea in a depoliticised and sanction-free context. This finding has far-reaching implications for environmental peacebuilding. First, NGOs can pave the way for engaging conflict parties even in the face of ongoing hostility. Second, environmental cooperation provides an opportunity for a win–win strategy for conflict parties.

Keywords:

• North Korea
• South Korea
• peacebuilding
• environmental cooperation
• forestry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this study, we refer to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as North Korea and the Republic of Korea as South Korea.

2 There were no follow-up meetings after the inauguration of the Lee administration in 2008 (Lee 2018).

3 We define an NGO as ‘any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national or international level. Task-oriented and driven by people with a common interest, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions, bring citizens’ concerns to Governments, monitor policies, and encourage political participation at the community level’ (UN. n.d.). Specifically, this study focuses on locally based NGOs.

4 For instance, Habib (2015) claimed that North Korea’s engagement may have arisen from the motivation to use the UNFCCC as a platform to enhance its capacity in agricultural and energy sectors.

5 This data was retrieved from https://cdm.unfccc.int/Projects/projsearch.html and was updated as of December 2019.

6 For other countries, the number of representatives was fewer than 10 officials.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annie Young Song

Annie Young Song obtained her PhD in Political Science from the University of Hong Kong and received a BAH in Economics and Psychology and an MPA from Queen’s University. Her research interest focuses on international political economy and environmental politics and policy in East Asia. She is currently working on a project at the University of Sydney.

Justin V. Hastings

Justin V. Hastings is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of International Relations and Comparative Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He is the author of A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2016). He received an MA (2003) and PhD (2008) in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University (2001).