Miss Catherine Taylor1
1Curtin University, Australia
Biography:
Catherine Taylor is a PhD Candidate at Curtin University, currently working on South Korea-Australia constructivist political economy in the context of green energy transition having received a Curtin Research Training Scholarship in 2023. She commenced her PhD research in late March 2024.
Abstract:
Both Australia and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have recently taken proactive steps to upgrade bilateral relations through economically acute cooperation in climate and energy action amid intensifying geopolitical rivalry and climate devastation. Despite concrete movements forward, such as the ratification of the Australia-ROK Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2021, the primary reality of decarbonising a centrally economic bilateral relationship largely driven by carbon-intensive resource trade remains. This paper considers the question, what is the interaction between framing/s of the Australia-ROK bilateral relationship in low-carbon cooperation, and the crucial processes that enable or constrain this? Drawing on secondary and archival data concerning historical energy and resource trade relations, and current transnational low-carbon engagement between South Korea and Western Australia, this paper aims to take a re-positioned view on the drivers increasing, and concurrently, institutionalising low-carbon bilateral cooperation. Both Australia, with Western Australia as the subnational example, and the ROK, have historically benefitted from bipartisan support for developmental tactics in their most prominent respective industries, reinforced by economic growth and relative political stability. I offer the tentative position that Australia-ROK bilateral relationship building can be conceptualised through advancements in focused “symbiotic developmentalism/s” amid transition to Net-Zero, which move in-line with global changes in the International Political Economy, while remaining congruent to each state’s embedded developmental objectives and behaviours. Primarily this paper offers an alternative position to critique the emergence of various low-carbon bilateralisms between the two states amid a literature gap on ideational economic relations on the Australia-ROK relationship.