ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Northeast Asia's unique factors for building environmental governance, especially in comparison with Europe. It introduces the European approach to building environmental governance, based on convention protocol. The focus then shifts to the developments of the Northeast Asian approach, based on cooperation and soft institution building. The governance structure for the implementation of the UNDP/GEF YSLME Project, chiefly the role played by the Project Management Office, supported the soft, cooperation-based approach. The UNDP/GEF YSLME Project has been recognized as one of the most successful regional cooperation projects of the UNDP's many existing Large Marine Ecosystem projects. The Project Management Office effectively provided essential information on developing regional activities on marine environmental protection for the governments and experts in the region. The expert-based, bottom-up process of developing regional policies also facilitated marine environment cooperation between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK).
