"Preface" [2011] ELECD 722; in Cullen, Richard; VanderWolk, Jefferson; Xu, Yan (eds), "Green Taxation in East Asia" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Green Taxation in East Asia

Editor(s): Cullen, Richard; VanderWolk, Jefferson; Xu, Yan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849803007

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface
The planning for the conference on which this book is based began in mid-
2008. The title for the conference held at Hong Kong University (HKU),
was: "Green Taxation in East Asia". This title, which worked well for the
conference, has been retained for this book.
It was suggested, in 2008, that it would be sensible to run our conference
after, rather than before, the Conference of the Parties (COP15) Climate
Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December, 2009. The
HKU conference, thus, ran in late January, 2010.
From the time when the conference was conceived as the Second
International Conference of the Taxation Law Research Programme at
HKU, the primary focus was identified as being on taxation systems ­ and
how they should respond (especially in East Asia) to the serious environ-
mental challenges posed by growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We
knew that much international effort had been expended on research and
analysis related to the role of other (non-taxation) regulatory measures
designed to meet the GHG challenge. Taxation, though, tended to be
regarded as being of secondary importance, at best, in the mainstream,
post-Kyoto global debate on how best to tackle excessive GHG emissions.
This comparative lack of attention to the role of taxation and related
measures as tools to help remedy environmental degradation is unfor-
tunate, we believe, especially in the case of East Asia. China, the largest
nation in the world and the key jurisdiction in East Asia has so many
...