ABSTRACT
Even though PM air pollution has been identified as a serious health hazard in China, Korea and in parts of Japan, the allocation of responsibility for emissions has become a hindrance to negotiation and cooperation. As a result, so far no international regime for PM mitigation has been established. This chapter observes the current situation of pollution and health hazards given by transboundary PM movement in China, Japan and Korea, and then explores the potential for policy coordination to reduce air pollution, based on an analysis using the E3ME model.
In the baseline case, emissions of air pollutants are expected to increase because of increased fossil fuel consumption and economic expansion. However, we find that, when climate change mitigation policies are implemented to discourage fossil fuel consumption (building on the results of Chapter 5), large reductions of air pollutants can be realized. China and Japan could reduce their direct PM emissions by 35% and 25%, respectively, while Korea could reduce direct PM emissions by as much as 61%.
