Comparing South Korea and Germany’s official development assistance projects in climate protection in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam
International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management
ISSN: 1756-8692
Article publication date: 21 November 2016
Abstract
Purpose
This explorative study aims to compare and analyze the behavior of a traditional and an emerging donor, namely, Germany and South Korea, in the field of climate change-related official development assistance (ODA). It analyzes their ODA projects in 2013 in four Southeast Asian countries severely affected by climate change, namely, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. It also adapts the existing framework to categorize ODA allocation according to receiving countries’ need and merit and donors’ self-interest.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper first describes both countries’ policies and activities. It then uses a country’s vulnerability to climate change as a measure of its need, its climate change readiness as a measure of its merit and its bilateral trade volume in environmental goods with donor countries as a measure of donors’ self-interest to analyze the allocation of climate-related ODA.
Findings
Results suggest that Korean ODA in the field of climate protection is driven more by receiving countries’ need and merit, but self-interest seems to be important for both donors. In addition, many projects labeled as adaptation or mitigation projects only have a weak link to these goals. There are limitations to the present paper. First, it could only analyze projects in 2013 because there are no earlier project data available in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System. Second, because of the simplifying assumptions of the need–merit–self-interest framework, possible other determinants of aid allocation were deliberately ignored. Finally, this explorative study is restricted to four vulnerable countries in Southeast Asia.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to compare a traditional and an emerging donor’s behavior and to explore the allocation of climate-related ODA using the need–merit–self-interest framework.
Keywords
Citation
Bessey, D. and Palumbarit, M. (2016), "Comparing South Korea and Germany’s official development assistance projects in climate protection in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam", International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Vol. 8 No. 5, pp. 613-631. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-06-2015-0077
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited