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Comparing South Korea and Germany’s official development assistance projects in climate protection in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam

Donata Bessey (EastAsia International College, Yonsei University, Wonju, Republic of Korea)
Michelle Palumbarit (Department of Political Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea)

International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management

ISSN: 1756-8692

Article publication date: 21 November 2016

386

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

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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