The European Union Green Deal in Southeast Asia: Critical Approaches to Policy Discourse and Implementation

One of the first book-length works that critically examines the discourses and implementation of the European Union Green Deal (EGD) in Southeast Asia, this volume charts the complex mix of controversies, ambiguities, and opportunities that EGD policies present for Southeast Asian countries.

Tasked with making the European Union (EU) climate-neutral by 2050 through green transformation, the EGD has generated controversy through a lack of clarity over implementation details and caused considerable uncertainty for countries concerned about its economic and social impact. Controversies stem from its unilateral nature, rooted in power imbalances between the EU and Southeast Asia, which give rise to perceptions of inequity and create political and economic strains. Drawing on different theoretical approaches and detailed empirical analyses of key aspects of the EGD, the chapters present critical contributions from a diverse group of established and emerging Southeast Asian and European scholars investigating the tension and complexity of EGD policy implementation and discourse.

Demonstrating how foreign policy implementation can lead not only to contestation but also to convergence and collaboration, this book will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates, and scholars in the fields of environmental policy, EU policy, and Southeast Asian politics and policy.

Otto Hospes is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and Adjunct Professor of the Politics of Global Value Chains at IPB University, Indonesia. His research focuses on the international politics of sustainable food and agriculture, particularly the contestation between state and non-state actors from the Global South and Global North over sustainability governance. He has published widely on the governance of sustainable palm oil in Indonesia, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), and conflicts between communities and companies. He is co-author of Rightless Resistance: Postcolonial Citizenship, Palm Oil, and Land Grabbing in Indonesia. His recent work examines debates between the EU and countries in the Global South over EU "green" legislation on renewable energy, deforestation, and due diligence, as well as the idea of norm subsidiarity as an alternative to regulatory unilateralism.

Arya Hadi Dharmawan is Professor in Political Ecology in the Faculty of Human Ecology, IPB University, Indonesia. He primarily researches the topics of agricultural expansion, rural livelihoods, farm household livelihood resilience and vulnerability, agrarian changes, natural resources, and environmental governance. His recent work focuses on Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) in Indonesia, the Oil Palm Adaptive Landscape (OPAL), and the impact of European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) Policy in Indonesia.

Athiqah Nur Alami is Senior Researcher at the Research Center for Politics, the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional [BRIN]), Indonesia. Her main interests are Indonesia's labour migration, foreign policy, and gender in International Relations. She has been part of the research team on Indonesia's foreign policy for the last ten years. In the last three years, Athiqah and her team have been conducting research on Indonesia in the Indo-Pacific, gender in Indonesia's foreign policy, education for displaced children, and forced migration. Her publication with the research team, "Indonesia's engagement in the climate change negotiations: building national resilience," as part of the edited volume on Climate Change, Community Response and Resilience, was published in 2023.

Helen E.S. Nesadurai is Professor of International Political Economy at Monash University Malaysia in the School of Arts and Social Sciences. From an original interest in the IPE of regional integration, governance, and state-based institutional architectures in Southeast Asia/ASEAN and the Asia Pacific, she has expanded her work to study non-state modes of transnational governance and their intersection with state authority in this region. Her recent work, "Challenging the EU Deforestation Regulation: Sovereignty Games as Authority Contests in Global Governance," has been accepted for publication in International Affairs in 2026.